County manager recommends lower tax rate

Orange County Manager Laura Blackmon is recommending a decrease in the county tax rate which, combined with increased property values, would generate the same amount of taxes next fiscal year as this one. The recommended tax rate would be 86 cents per $100 of valuation, down from 99.8 cents.

At a work session tonight, the Orange County Board of Commissioners will consider four different scenarios for responding to some Orange County taxpayers' demand that they rescind the 2008 countywide property revaluation, which raised the average tax value by 24 percent.

Two scenarios would uphold the revaluation, with one enacting a "revenue-neutral" tax rate as recommended by Blackmon and the other "holding harmless" any taxpayer whose property value went up less than the average. The second scenario would lower the tax rate to 80.5 cents.

The other two scenarios would rescind the revaluation, with one maintaining the 2008-2009 tax rate and property assessments and the other raising the tax rate to $1.05 to account for other losses of county revenue. The former could raise slightly more or less than last year's $126.9 million; the latter would raise exactly that much as in Blackmon's preferred scenario.