cabarrus county board of commissioners regular meeting november ...

October 17, 2011 (Regular Meeting)Page(C) RECOGNITIONS AND PRESENTATIONS(C-1) DSS – Recognition of Betty Jean Prewitt for Service on Social ServiceBoardChairman White recognized Betty Jean Prewitt for her six (6) years ofservice on the Social Service Board.Ms. Prewitt was unable to attend tonight’s meeting.Services Director, accepted the certificate on her behalf.Ben Rose, Social(D) INFORMAL PUBLIC COMMENTSChairman White opened the meeting for Informal Public Comments at 7:08p.m. He stated each speaker would be limited to three minutes.Evelyn Barbee, resident of 9668 Ravenscroft Lane NW in Concord, statedshe is enrolled in the current County Government 101 class, which has beenvery informative.Jason Oesterreich, resident of 800 Towncreek Place in Concord,presented the following comments on the draft 2012 Schedule of Values:First, I want to commend you on your rejection of thefederal stimulus funds. By that action, theCounty isemphatically stating that it is attempting to do its part toreign in out of control spending. Leadershipmust startsomewhere.However, I do note that at the same time this Commission iscondemning out of control federal spending, out of controlspending at the County level is now driving out of control taxincreases.I ask you, will you apply the same fiscal principles thatyou unanimously voted for in terms of the Federal Government toour budget here locally?This Schedule e of Values is stillnothing more than a taxincrease on the citizens of CabarrusCounty. As noted in yourlast Commission meeting, the residential base rate went up 18percent to match the housing price increase in 2008 but, evenwith the additional ditional $2.00reduction, has come down only 4 percentdespite a 15 percentdecrease in home prices.At your last meeting,Mr. Weisner stated that the index wasbased on building cost,not on home sales values. However, atyour work session, inannouncing a minimal $2.00 reduction, Mr.Weisner stated, “In explaining to him how we did go about it, wenoticed that t in the past few months the price of single familyhomes has continued to drop slightly and that’s where we came upwith the $68.00”.DRAFTThis statement shows that the base rate is of course tiedto market values.In addition to the reduction for market values announced,the rate contains a major error overstating construction costs.When I met with Mr. Weisner, I noticed that in hiscalculation of the per square foot price his office was doublecounting some expenditures. These items were included in the persquare foot price but then additionally as an add-on after thegeneric square foot price is established. For instance, fireplaces are included in calculating the per square foot price butthen once that value is determined, an additional sum is added tothat value up to $6700 for a fireplace. Thus, including afireplace in the per square foot price artificially inflates theper square foot price because it is a separate add on.Mr. Weisner said he was going to fix this error, but it wasnot addressed. Worth of note though is that Mr. Weisner said “Icould move the base rate up $2.00 or down $2.00 and we wouldstill get to the same value because we use multiple factors toget to 100 percent of market value so if we move down on baseA-1Page 14