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I like the idea in principle, but I'd want to see some more specifics. For one thing, when fully funded in 20 years, $1B would generate, conservatively, what -- about $50M-$60M a year? That's not not a lot even now, let alone in 20 years. In the current budget year, Guilford is spending $4M on capital outlay for itself, roughly $11.7M on capital outlay for the public schools and GTCC and $32M in debt service, PLUS bond projects, which I presume this endowment would be intended to supplant. So would $1B, big as the amount sounds, be enough of an endowment to generate the revenue a growing county will need in 20 years?

I see a couple of problems with this.

First, we recently had an election. Presumably, the purpose of elections is to allow candidates to express their vision for how the county should be managed. Perhaps I missed something, but I do not recall any candidates proposing a five cent increase in the property tax rate. Please correct me if I am wrong on this point. It is problematic for any elected official to claim to have arrived suddenly at an epiphany regarding capital funding only a couple of months after an election. Simple rules of ethical disclosure would suggest this should have been fully aired at election time.

What compounds this situation is that the county has passed two significant bond issues in the last several years. It was represented that taxes would not be increased, and I seem to recall that they ultimately were. In addition, county revenues should also have been increasing because of real estate revaluations and the sales tax increase.

Consideration of any tax increase must include an assessment of the effect that it will have on economic growth locally and the growth of private sector jobs. It should also include an assessment of how it would affect our competitiveness for new jobs with respect to other counties in NC; and also with respect to counties in other southeastern states. We also need to know to what extent it would exacerbate flight into surrounding counties.

Sometimes it is necessary to hold the line on taxation and require that adjustments and economies be found on the spending side of the equation. There seems to be a palpable desire in these parts to advance furtively periodic incremental increases in both. Indeed, it often seems we aspire to emulate New Jersey.

Doug Clark floated the idea of Paul Gibson as chair of the County Commissioners, and I was initially persuaded; but perhaps we are better off with someone who has a skeptical aversion to paying increased taxes.

Hear hear, Joe ! Maybe it was the air over at Chapel Hill that caused Paul Gibson to go daffy. The place does cause bizzare and unexplained behavior. New Jersey, my foot. Try Taxachusetts.

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