Orange County NC Website
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1 <br />2 <br />3 <br />4 <br />5 <br />6 <br />7 <br />8 <br />9 <br />10 <br />11 <br />12 <br />13 <br />14 <br />15 <br />16 <br />17 <br />18 <br />19 <br />20 <br />21 <br />22 <br />23 <br />24 <br />25 <br />26 <br />27 <br />28 <br />29 <br />30 <br />31 <br />32 <br />33 <br />34 <br />35 <br />36 <br />37 <br />38 <br />39 <br />40 <br />41 <br />42 <br />43 <br />44 <br />45 <br />46 <br />47 <br />48 <br />49 <br />46 <br />• Can we know how much citizens are paying for each individual service relative to what <br />they are getting from each individual service? <br />No, Not really. <br />• For example, citizens of town A are paying $50 for the library and getting $30 worth of <br />services while citizens of town B are paying $10 for the library and getting $15 of <br />services. <br />• In essence, citizens of town A are subsidizing citizens of town B. <br />• Abe buys an airline ticket for $400 and Barb buys an airline ticket for $600. Both are on <br />the same flight. <br />• With one purchase of one good we can say that Barb paid $200 more than Abe. <br />• In essence, Barb is `subsidizing' Abe's trip. <br />• But consider the following. Abe and Barb don't buy individual airline tickets, but buy a <br />package that includes airfare, hotel, food, drinks, and activities. <br />• Both Abe and Barb pay $2,000 for the vacation package. Who subsidizes who? <br />• In the first scenario, Abe is `subsidizing' Barb's hotel while Barb is `subsidizing' Abe's <br />airfare <br />• In the second scenario, Abe is `subsidizing' Barb's airfare, while Barb is `subsidizing' <br />Abe's hotel <br />Results <br />• The same thing applies in Orange County <br />• Ignoring charges and specific taxes, for the most part taxpayers are paying into a <br />general fund, which is spent on many different services. <br />• Different amounts of monies can be spent in different cities for identical services, but <br />you can't assign individual weights to both the taxes and the expenditures. <br />• You can only determine the summation of the value of all services relative to the total <br />tax since citizens receive one tax bill not a separate tax bill for each service. <br />• If one spends different amounts in different cities for the same service, you are a priori <br />choosing the percentage of tax revenue spent on a service. In essence by picking <br />different amount to spend, you are picking how much citizens pay for that service. <br />• Citizens of town A and B pay a tax bill of $500. Town A spends $30 on the library while <br />town B spends $15 on the library. <br />Results (chart) <br />(Services received by citizens per capita) <br />Results <br />• Notice that the summation numbers are negative. You will also notice that some cities <br />are more `negative' than others. Does this mean that some cities are subsidizing <br />others? <br />Not necessarily. <br />• Recall that services received and taxes paid are occurring in the same year. <br />• All of the city and county governments are moving current tax year receipts into `funds' <br />for future expenditures <br />• One can think of these `funds' as savings accounts —hence the `negative' numbers <br />• Different cities also have different amounts being paid into reserve funds. <br />• Some county level programs are less evenly distributed than others. For example, <br />economic development dollars are more concentrated in the cities than the <br />unincorporated parts of the county <br />