Data from North Carolina points to a nationwide problem: that services may be going unfunded in your community because of flawed processes, sloppy math, and lack of respect for the law in the property tax system.
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In Buncombe, NC, flawed computer formulas are being used to generate thousands of dollars in "tax breaks" for owners of larger, more expensive homes.
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Residents of Mooresville, NC, are outraged as a road-widening project and ensuing regulatory dispute pushed by city officials threaten the future of a longstanding farmers market.
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Neighbors in Chapel Hill, NC, mobilized to raise awareness of property tax inequities within their community…and ultimately brought about a $7-million reduction in home assessed values.
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When Strong Towns member John Holmes was fired for speaking against harmful development practices, he didn’t let that stop him. Working with other advocates, he’s paving the way to success for Charlotte, NC!
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Mansions on large lots, not rundown properties in low-socioeconomic-status neighborhoods, are the real blight on a community’s financial health.
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There are some obvious anomalies that are being overlooked in the property tax assessment system. Joe Minicozzi of Urban3 pulls back the curtain in this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast.
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The process for appealing your property taxes can be obscure, even when the appeal is merited (and more often than not, it is). This simple guide will help prepare you for when your property is next assessed.
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As an ad hoc committee recently discovered, owners of higher-valued properties are more likely to receive a tax break…simply because of bad data.
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Incrementalism is not an end in itself. Nor is it about a “small-is-beautiful” aesthetic for its own sake. Instead, it’s a practical pathway toward resilient, financially sound places.
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How have we come to the conclusion that most short-term rentals are taxed as “residential,” when many have no residents?
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Recently, the North Carolina Ad Hoc Appraisals Committee was challenged to face their own biases and fix their broken property tax assessment system. Here’s what happened.
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Across the country, the property tax system is causing economic hardship for homeowners—and it’s because the system itself is flawed.
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Strong Towns is partnering with Just Accounting for Health and Urban3 in a project to uncover the presence, and effects, of biases in tax assessment standards.
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The inequities in the tax assessment system are national. But the solutions will have to come from the bottom-up.
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If we want to live in a free and equitable society where everyone has the potential to succeed and experience prosperity, we have to understand where the inequities begin.
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The most brilliant innovations in building cities are already embodied in the traditional development pattern, a foolproof approach to creating resilient and productive places that was developed the hard way.
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A walk down a thriving main street like this one will be a reminder why our downtowns are worth protecting and nurturing.
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Would you rather have a pizza, or the ingredients of a pizza arranged in separate piles? This analogy has something to teach us about the consequences of how we organize our cities.
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Don't be seduced by the "signature project" that takes 20 years to complete, when there's huge basket of small projects you could hit the ground running on. That's a wildly different approach than anything our transit agencies or federal transportation funding mechanisms are set up for. But it's a more promising one.
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