Tax revolt meeting draws up to 1,400 people (Chapel Hill, NC)

CHAPEL HILL -- Calling it a revolution and vowing that the anti-tax movement exploding across the county has yet to reach its critical mass, organizers and members of the fledgling group say profligate spending, oppressively high tax rates and a political class that has lost touch with its constituents are in the crosshairs of change.

In an astonishing show of strength and depth, as many as 1,400 people went to Hillsborough on Monday night to protest the county's large hikes in property revaluations and to learn how to combat what many see as abuse of power. The crowd grew so large so fast that the fire marshal began turning back the crush of people trying to enter the Big Barn in the Daniel Boone Village, whose parking lot was jammed tightly with cars and lines of people stretching all the way to Churton Street hundreds of feet away.

"We went up there because I'd been outraged at how high our valuation is on our house," said Nancy Oates of Chapel Hill. "We were absolutely stunned that there were so many people there."

"We kind of thought it would be all people from northern Orange County, that there would be a lot of pickup trucks and ball hats. But there were a lot of people of all ages, all races . . . in business suits and professional dress," Oates said. "There were some from Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and that kind of surprised me, the diversity of the crowd."

Oates believes property values in her Mendel Drive neighborhood in Chapel Hill's Old Forest Creek neighborhood is "being revalued based on Carolina North being built, but that's all on hold. . . we're a long way from that."

She said she has appealed her revaluation, and after attending Monday's meeting, "I was very heartened to see that so many people evidently felt like I did."

Nobody is more shocked than the founder of the movement, Bryan Berger of Carrboro, who called Monday's meeting "a spectacle. I mean it was an event."

Monday's massive response is in stark contrast to the germination of what is now known as Orange Tax Revolt.

"I started this in my house three Wednesdays ago with 26 people," and 10 others unable to attend, Berger said. "This truly is exploding."

Having gotten organizational support from Orange County FreedomWorks, the local cell of a national anti-tax, limited-government organization started by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the group reserved the Big Barn for Monday's meeting.

"We thought, 'Well, gosh, if 300 people show up we'll feel good," Berger said. "The whole place was full by 7. People were sitting on floors, people were sitting on tables, it was standing room only."

When he walked outside to see how many people the fire marshal was denying admission to, Berger said he "looked at these people and it brought chills to me" realizing the line went all the way to the street.

"People are absolutely sick of the way these governments -- Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County -- are spending money," Berger said. "People love living in these communities. . . but these political fools are destroying it. . . We've got to stand up and stop it."

Berger said it is obvious homes are being overpriced by the revaluation in a sour economy.

"Just drive around Carrboro. There are so many homes for sale but nobody's selling. Go to Chapel Hill. Homes are for sale but nobody's selling," he said. "My Lord, people are talking about 25, 30, 40, 50, 60 percent" increases in home values. "It's just unbelievable."

Rusty Tolin of Hillsborough said he went to Monday's meeting because he cannot afford the back-to-back tax hikes being placed on his property.

"Everyone wants a little more out of my pocket and I'm getting sick and tired of it, and I think I was the average voice in the crowd," he said. "I'm sick and tired of big government reaching into my pocket and saying, 'You know two jobs is not enough. You need to work a little more to pay for your house."

"There was enough kindling there last night that if there had been a spark there would have been a big bonfire," Tolin said. "I'm speaking metaphorically here."

http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/opinion/columnists/way/

Tax revolt breathtaking in scope, spunk

Feb 26, 2009

Will the county commissioners and town councils in Orange County ever be able to conduct business as usual again?

Only at their own peril, it would seem, with the war drums beating loudly for tax relief and reduced spending.

But the elite political class, despite being afforded many perks, has suffered too often from a tin ear. It’s an affliction known to infect the governing rulers since time immemorial, and is responsible for Americans pledging allegiance today to the Stars and Stripes instead of the Union Jack.

Don’t lay all the blame on the governing boards in Orange County. They’ve been propped up for years by tax-and-spend liberals at the voting booths who clamor for more services, more programs, more government, more, more, more.

But something happened Monday that sucked the breath out of lungs all across the county. In a stunning show of angry force, a movement was born. An anti-tax revolt that crystallized in the twinkling of an eye drew somewhere between 1,200 and 1,400 people looking to change the status quo. The bulging mass of humanity spilled out of the Big Barn in Hillsborough into the parking lots and across the streets of the Daniel Boone Village.

Carrboro resident Bryan Berger, the architect of the movement who started with a simple wooden sign, hand-painted, in his yard just a few weeks ago, said “extravagant, irresponsible local spending” is the jet fuel that launched this rocket.

And he pulls no punches in blaming the county commissioners for years of tax hikes culminating in this year’s property revaluation that saddled taxpayers with an average 23 percent increase in home values amid a dismal national economy and plummeting home sales.

“Now they’ve put the last straw on the camel’s back, and the camel’s back is broke,” Berger said. “They’re going to reap what they’ve sown.”

Berger said the rapid rise of the Orange Tax Revolt is making it necessary for organizers to meet again next week to continue planning strategy, which will include finding a much larger venue to hold what he expects will be thousands of unhappy taxpayers on March 16.

More signs will be put up, fliers will be sent out, a mass e-mail distribution list is being organized and telephone banks are being set up to keep interested people informed. And there has been an extraordinary amount of interest, Berger said, from UNC professors complaining about the skyrocketing value placed on their townhomes to farmers near tears over a 60 percent property revaluation and seniors begging him to wage the good fight because they are going to lose their family homestead without tax relief.

Berger said consideration is being given to seeking something similar to California’s Proposition 13, which “stopped the obscene property taxes in California.” He lived in Michigan at a time it had the nation’s second-highest property taxes when the state, like California before it, put a cap on annual property tax rates.

While he’s immediately interested in toppling tax madness in Orange County, “We truly hope it’s going to grow from here and go statewide,” Berger said. “We are going to fight to have it made law that you can’t rape the property owner any more because of irresponsible spending by these officials.”

Roy Loflin, spokesman for Orange County FreedomWorks, the anti-tax, limited-government organization providing much of the structure to the tax revolt, said he’s not seen anything like what is taking shape. That’s saying something. Since his group first formed in 2001, FreedomWorks has been involved in successfully opposing the merger of city and county schools, bond issues and the recent land transfer tax.

“This one has generated more attention than those in the past,” Loflin said. “Our objective is to get the taxes lowered. We feel as these concerned citizens do, that the revaluation was made based on data that was really out of date. They used data from before the current economic turndown.”

Meanwhile, folks like Chapel Hill’s Wen Gong are doing what they can to aid and abet. He’s set up a Google group to track the tax revolt.

Gong, like others, is outraged that his property value was set at $323,591 in 2006, but in 2009 it’s leaped to $565,000.

“Is Chapel Hill experiencing some kind of magical housing bubble to warrant such an artificial tax valuation? I don’t think so,” Gong said.

Stay tuned. With elections around the corner, who wants to bet there’s an anti-tax slate of candidates? The time is ripe.

Dan E. Way is editor of The Chapel Hill Herald. E-mail him at dway@heraldsun.com or call 918-1035.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

NC *Ping*

NC Ping