Last night, the Rocky Mount City Council met.  The minutes aren’t available yet, but the Rocky Mount Telegram reports that the councillors discussed property taxes.  Surprise, surprise, it looks like they’ll be going up.

Due to this year’s revaluation and the city’s need to pay for the Downtown Community Facility, property taxes may climb from 60.5 cents per $100 of value to 66 cents.

Two cents of the possible tax hike are attributable to the Downtown Community Facility while the rest will be the city’s attempt to remain revenue neutral after the revaluation, which was conducted by Nash and Edgecombe counties…

Of course, we all knew this was coming.  It wasn’t a question of whether property taxes would rise, but by how much.  And this likely isn’t the end of the story. That 60.5 cents is just the city rate.  It doesn’t include the Nash or Edgecombe County property tax rates, which is levied on top of the city rate for those who live inside Rocky Mount’s city limits.

In Edgecombe, the current county rate is 95 cents.  In Nash, it’s 67 cents.  Those rates will likely go up, too, to cover the revaluation.  Which is precisely why it seemed prudent to me, and to many others, to wait until after the reval before issuing tens of millions of dollars in Special Obligation Bonds to pay for the Downtown Community Facility.

But that’s done now.  One can only hope that the city is right in it’s predictions about the great boost that the Downtown Community Facility will be to the local economy.  If they’re not, then this could be a very dark picture indeed.