In an era of doomsday government budgets and looming layoffs of public employees, it's unusual to see a bipartisan bill submitted to give a class of property owners a tax break, but in this case we have to agree it's an appropriate measure.
Republican state Sen. Pete Brunstetter and Sen. Linda Garrou, a Democrat, co-sponsored a bill last week that would give a 50-percent tax break on improved property in the path of the long-delayed Northern Beltway around Winston-Salem.
"The existing law already provides that unimproved property in a corridor is taxed at 20 percent of appraised value," Brunstetter told the Journal's Wesley Young. "That does not provide any relief for people whose improved property is in those corridors."
Landowners in the beltway corridor have had their lives and property on hold for more than a decade as lawsuits over the proposed urban loop delayed the project. Those lawsuits were dismissed early last year, shortly before the Department of Transportation announced that the eastern leg of the beltway, which was considered a higher local priority, was last on a ranking of 21 state loop projects waiting for funding. Local officials mounted an unsuccessful campaign to convince the DOT to reassess its ranking, claiming that Forsyth County had been unfairly passed over because its project had been delayed by lawsuits and had grown prohibitively expensive. The loop is essential for future economic development and to ease heavy traffic on local interstate highways, but now carries a total price of $1.3 billion. Neither the eastern nor western sections of the beltway, which the DOT considers separate projects, are scheduled for construction in the next 10 years. Nor is the purchase of right-of-way. Seven landowners filed a lawsuit last year to force the DOT to buy hundreds of properties along the route.
The Forsyth County tax assessor, Pete Rodda, said the tax break would cost the county about $250,000 in revenue. Cities and towns in the county would lose about $125,000, he said. Some landowners were worried that the tax break could lower the value of their property, but the bill is worded so that the value of property would not be changed.
As for the beltway's prospects, Brunstetter, co-chairman of the senate's budget-writing Appropriations Committee, sees little new funding for roads in sight. But for now, the long-suffering beltway property owners will get some relief if the tax-break bill passes.
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