Tax Rate Updates, Beaches

The only real surprise for New Hanover County’s beach communities is the 20% tax increase that sits on the horizon for Kure Beach. Mayor Dean Lambeth is a strong conservative voice on almost every front so this was an eye opener and tough for even him to swallow.

(StarNews) The proposal is preliminary, but Mayor Dean Lambeth said a tax increase, along with an increase for stormwater and water and sewer fees, is necessary to fill a budget shortfall caused by unexpected and additional expenses in the town’s estimated $4.9 million budget. The town’s current tax rate is 13.5 cents per $100 of assessed value.

No doubt that will be a tough one, the advantage Dean has is that he has been hard on spending each and every day.  The entire town council even donates their ENTIRE stipend to charity.   He defended his position on the radio this morning saying that CPAs, who are now doing the books, spotted a $400k swing in the budget (was a $200k surplus that was actually a $200k deficit.)

Wrightsville Beach and Carolina Beach will be holding their tax rates this year, after all, it’s an election year.  Sadly, Carolina Beach will most likely raise taxes next year as they’ve wasted money on “road dieting” and are using savings this year to balance things out.

Krauthammer Smashes Obama, “Leading From Behind”

In one of Krauthammer’s hardest hitting editorial pieces I’ve read, he literally smashes Obama’s leadership.

(Leading from behind is illustrated in) President Obama’s shocking passivity during Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution to his dithering on Libya, acting at the very last moment, then handing off to a bickering coalition, yielding the current bloody stalemate. It’s been a foreign policy of hesitation, delay and indecision, marked by plaintive appeals to the (fictional) “international community” to do what only America can.

WOW!  The opinion piece is worth the read over at the Washington Post and gets more damning as you read on.

Other presidents have taken anti-Americanism as a given, rather than evidence of American malignancy, believing — as do most Americans — in the rightness of our cause and the nobility of our intentions. Obama thinks anti-Americanism is a verdict on America’s fitness for leadership. I would suggest that “leading from behind” is a verdict on Obama’s fitness for leadership.