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Fri 28 Sep, 2007 12:18 pm
Has anyone experienced a new city incorporation in a California area and seen an increase in their taxes and fees? What was your experience?
Our California mountain area is debating the worth of creating an incorporated city. The proponents argue that this change will not increase taxes. In other words the county property taxes we pay now will cover the cost of installing a city government. They argue that a large percentage of the money taken from our area by the county for taxes will be now be available for our new city. However, I and many other opponents, argue that this cannot be true because we will be creating another level or layer of government. This newly created city government will be able to charge fees for the new services they will undoubtedly create. Taxes can be voted on --- fees are imposed.
I can't speak to CA but I went through this debate in OK when I lived there.
Your arguement about the new layer of government comes out as fairly meaningless in the end. While it does create a new layer, the current county government usually loses almost all of it's authority over the incorporated area so you lose 99% of that layer anyway. Yes, the new city layer can tax and create fees but the current county layer can do that too so those always come out as a wash. The incorporated area will have to pay some sort of tax to the county but that is usually pretty trivial. If your area is the higher taxed region of a county then it is very possible that you could incorporate and not see any increase.
I found that in my case the real issue was whether I agreed more with the plans of the people residing in the proposed incorporated area or the people outside of it.
For example, let's say that the future plans of the majority of the people that live in the area that wishes to incorporate include building an airport and that the future plans of the rest of the county are to NOT build an airport.
If you disagree with the airport idea then your best bet is to fight against incorporation and hope that you, along with the voices of the people of the rest of the county are enough to override those that want the airport.
If incorporation happens in this case, the voices of the rest of the county don't really mean anything so you'd be left standing by yourself.
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