Starting later this year, North Carolinians will stop paying property taxes to their local county tax collectors -- and start paying the county taxes directly to the state Division of Motor Vehicles, instead. DMV will collect the tax when it collects car registration renewal fees, and send the tax money back to the county.

I'm writing about this today, and I'd like to hear from car owners. What do you think about this change? Please email me at bruce.siceloff@newsobserver.com, and don't forget your name and daytime contact info. (2/12/13 update: See today's Road Worrier with reader comments.)

The General Assembly made the change in 2005 in hope of increasing revenues and reducing costs for county tax collectors. Some counties say they spend a lot of money trying to collect vehicle taxes, but many drivers just don't pay up.

It means drivers will write a single check to NCDMV for the combined registration fee and tax bill.

Durham's City Council, it appears, has heard enough about a "Business Improvement District" downtown. Approval for a service contract in the BID is on the consent agenda for Monday's council meeting, and could get the go-ahead along with 20 other items in a single vote without discussion.

Well, the For Sale sign two houses down is still up, months now since my neighbors moved out. 

I use the house as a barometer. Homes in my neighborhood used to sell in weeks, sometimes days. But the recession has caught up with Orange County, says tax Administrator Jo Roberson.

In Today's Chapel Hill News, Roberson says homes are staying on the market longer. From Jan. 1, 2009, to Oct. 31, 2010, sales toaled 2,178. From Jan. 1, 2005, to Dec. 31, 2006, a similar period after the last property revaluation, sales totaled 4,844.      

In any revaluation the county wants to get the appraised tax value as close to the potential sale price as possible, or 100 percent.  After the 2005 revaluation, the county’s ratio was 95.6 percent. By the end of 2006, it had dropped to 88.3 percent, meaning the median sales value had already outpaced the median assessed value.

This time, Roberson says, the county's tax values are even closer to sales figures. After the 2009 revaluation, a Jan. 1, 2010,  N.C. Department of Revenue Property Tax Division found Orange County’s ratio was 98.65 percent. From Jan. 1 to Oct. 31, 2010, the ratio rose slightly to about 99.1, indicating that property values are flat.

“Quite honestly we’re just about as close as you can get,” Roberson said.  “You just don’t get more than 99 percent, and we did.”

The county commissioners must decide by next month whether to delay the next revaluation two years. The delay could save $200,000. If they go ahead and revalue and properties are worth less, they risk having to raise the tax rate to keep the same momney coming in.  If they don't revalue and actual property values have changed, up or down, they risk current assessments being out of date and people not paying their fair share.

What do you think?
 

"Development Guidelines" for the 2010-11 city budget are there among the items to be approved on the consent agenda for Monday night's City Council meeting.

These guidelines are points to be "considered" as the city administration juggles how little it's going to have coming in and how much it's going to need to pay out next fiscal year.

Top of the list: increase of the property-tax rate.

Times are tight all over, but it's going to cost more next year to service debt on some of those bonds the voting taxpayers approved (remember "8 Bonds For A Better Durham"?) when times were looser.

And that federal stimulus money that cushioned the sticker shock this year isn't going to be there next time.

You can read the whole rationale, and the rest of what's to be considered, at www.durhamnc.gov/agendas/2010/cm20100405/219349_6979_284204.doc.PDF.

Use this interactive graphic to explore how 2008 tax-rate changes have affected property vales in Wake County.

The Raleigh City Council is likely to pass a budget next week, perhaps as early as Monday. The council continues its budget deliberations Monday at 5 p.m. If they don't pass a budget on Monday night, the council must meet each day after that until they do.

The biggest question remaining is whether the council will pass the 5 cent property tax increase proposed by City Manager Russell Allen. Several council members have already expressed an interest in reducing that number. There's also been a lot of talk about trying to reduce the proposed 15 percent increase in the water and sewer rate that Allen put forward.

Any reductions in the proposed increases will likely require the council to delay moving forward on one or more capital projects.