TRADER Candidate Forum
The Indian Trail Trader will be having a candidate forum on Thursday October 11th, 2007 from 7pm-9pm at Sun Valley High School Auditorium. I encourage all citizens of Indian Trail to mark their calendars for that evening. If you are concerned about the future direction of the town you should make sure to be in attendance. If you are concerned about our tax rate, public safety, infrastructure, you should make plans to be in attendance.
Indian Trail is at a crossroads with this election and at stake are 3 council seats and the Mayor. There is only one incumbent in the running and that is the current mayor. The other 7 candidates are new to running for office and are making an attempt in the political arena.
Though three candidates for council and the incumbent mayor are all backed by the same special interest backed PAC.
There are many issues facing our town. In no particular order: Liquor by the drink, Public Safety, TAXES, infrastructure, roads, water and sewer, schools, broadening the tax base, the downtown project, the new town hall.
I encourage everyone able to make time for probably the only candidate forum for Indian Trail to turn out. Get to know the issues and where the candidates stand on each. Make an informed decision and then VOTE on November 6th.
Your vote is a terrible thing to waste.
posted by Lee Godwin at
7:13 PM
2 Comments:
Thank you for your site and information. I'd like to hear from all candidates on a few points. Apparently this must be done on each one's separate web site. Like many who have moved into Indian Trail (IT) after years in Mecklenburg, the IT tax rate was attractive. So with that in mind, do you favor:
1) Funding large projects, e.g., a town hall, major roads, etc., with bonds using growth in the tax base or, by increasing the tax rate?
2) For the larger town hall, which some have proposed, should there be a referendum allowing citizens to vote to build it?
3) Assuming you heard Sheriff Cathey's presentation Sept. 11 concerning IT contracting for deputies vs. setting up an IT police department, do you agree or disagree with his analysis favoring the current system?
4) Estimates suggest there will be a 20% or so increase in property values in the 2008 re-evaulation. Would you support a rollback in the tax rate to offset the effects of all (or part) of this increase?
5) The IT Transportation Committee supported a 4 cents increase for funding road matches. Is the 4 cents needed to meet upcoming needs, or is the 2 cents sufficient?
6) Finally, can Indian Trail accomplish it's goals without having to reach the tax rates of Stallings 25, Mint Hill 27.5, Matthews 37.5 cents? [Union's rate of 73.73 (incl. fire) is already only 10 cents below Mecklenburg's rate of 83.87 cents now.]
Thanking you in advance for your reply.
gm parks,
Great questions all of them and I will try to answer them for you. Please remember, the questions you asked have a lot of variables and the following is my opinion with the information I have right now. My opinions are subject to change with more information:
1. I think its time to look at using bonds especially now that IT has grown so, its obvious the towns needs are beyond the ability to pay for some items. With the cost of a town hall about 8 million. Chestnut road extension at 28 million and other projects seems that the logical way to fund this would be through bonds.
2. I have no problem with a referendum allowing the voters to decide that issue along with liquor by the drink. I believe most issues can be handled by the council but some need the public buy in and so far in IT we haven't seen enough participation to get an accurate opinion one way or the other. Now with that said, I understand the 30,000 sqft proposed town hall is for the future. Should do for 20-30 years. If you build something that big, won't you expect to fill it? Which means the government just keeps growing..and we as a council need to control those types of cost as much as possible.
3. I did not hears Sheriff Cathey's presentation. At this point though, I do not have enough information to tell me a private police force is necessary. At the same time it seems we spend 10% of the budget for contracted officers and that is a number I believe needs to be increased. There are a lot of factors that need to be considered before making a major move like this. I would like to see a cost benefit analysis, ratio tables, if we have a need, response time avg, info telling where the crime is happening and so on. At some point I do believe we will need a police force, I just don't know if and when that will be.
4. We don't control the county reevaluation. We do however benefit from it as a town. At this point without any other information I can't say I would favor a rollback of the towns taxes. It seems to me that a rollback would just defeat what the town is trying to do. Rollback now, increase later doesn't seem right. If the town hadn't rolled back taxes the last time a reeval occurred we probably wouldn't have needed 2 tax increases the past 2 years. With the growth that has occurred in IT the infrastructure and services hadn't kept pace. They have been using fund balance for years to balance the budget.
5. Being on the transportation committee, past MUMPO rep for Union County I have seen a lot of road situations and they all require money. Our roads are inadequate at best and any delay makes matters worse going forward. The DOT requires a lot of projects to have a 20% match of funds. Road projects are going up daily. The .02 was not enough of an increase but it won't hurt either. We just shouldn't pass on projects because we can't come up with the match such as Stallings did last year on Idlewild rd.
6. The best answer I can give you is I don't know? At this point there are too many variables for such a specific answer. My opinion is that comparing services and all we will have to be someplace near those rates in order to provide similar services. Sound planning and managing will have to be a priority and we as a town have to get the value out of every tax dollar. We might have to get to the levels of the towns you mentioned but not right away if we do it right.
Again thanks for the questions, they are the toughest I've tried to answer so far. Please go to my campaign website at www.LEEGODWIN.info for more information. Thank you.
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