Davidson is a wonderful and wealthy community. However, in a slow economy, it is wise to trim the sail and look for ways to cut costs. Our roads have been neglected and need attention. The town should find a way to fund these by cutting or delaying other expenses.

How will Davidson look when we are built out in town and in the ETJ? Will there be additional commercial nodes? If so, will they compete with or complement downtown? Do we need multiple police and fire stations? Where and when? What additional staffing requirements will occur, and how will we phase them? The questions continue, when one considers all of the implications of a completely built Davidson, which will have a population several times larger than our current size. A comprehensive plan is simply a long-term plan, to be revised as needed.

The proposal is to take a total of two years, with maximum public involvement, guided and shaped by an outside professional. Its benefits can be seen as one looks at this year’s struggles to accommodate many short-term requests with limited funds.

The main point, though, is the original: the Town of Davidson has no comprehensive plan. For a community with aggressive planning policies, this is an anomaly.

Government agencies and departments ask for the moon, then cry crocodile tears because so many of their worthwhile plans need to be axed in the name of fiscal responsibility. Meanwhile pet projects “limp through” under the cover of “reasonable, if unfortunately insufficient funding,” and new initiatives without a special handler get sheared like the sacrificial lamb they always were.

The money is there, and it will flow, but maybe not to sweep the bike lanes or finish the greenways– or build bus stop shelters (my unfunded pet project).

Do we have a street sweeper? Does it ever sweep the streets? When I’m riding to work on my bicycle I’m tired of dodging gravel in the bike lanes. And when I’m in my car I’m tired of the Griffith Street slalom course between the Harris Teeter and the railroad–nothing but holes, cones, patches, and gravel. Davidson could do better.

Cover that and I’d love to pay for more open space and greenways. (Really!) But if the basics like streets are mismanaged (or at the least unkempt), we should be skeptical about complicated things.

As stated, a 2 cent increase in the property tax rate would add $100 annually to the tax burden of a $500,000 home, which is about the cost of an “average” Davidson home these days (and keep in mind the property tax valuation upon which taxes are based is typically much, much lower than market value). That is about 30 cents a day. The median family income in Davidson is in excess of $100,000 per year. Does 30 cents a day really sound like that much? Have one less latte at Summit every ten days and you’ve got that covered.

Laurie Venzon’s concern about increasing taxes in a slow economy has some merit, but I think it is incorrect to assume that keeping taxes flat will save citizens money. One benefit of a slow economy is that costs for many construction items are lower than they have been in years. If we put off capital projects until the economy improves, it may well cost us more in the long run to do those projects at prices that are higher than they are right now.

I am not a proponent of raising taxes just to raise taxes, but as I looked through the budget and saw what requests could not be funded, it struck me as ridiculous that a town as wealthy as Davidson is continually crying poverty (NOTE: we should find a way to hold flat, or reduce, property taxes on those who actually are living in poverty in Davidson).

Taxation is how our community collectively makes investments. It should not be viewed as a negative, but rather an opportunity to make investments that will make Davidson an even better place to live.

I hope that this board shows more courage and imagination during this crucial budgeting process. I for one am tired of having to wait for everything to get done. I would like a meaningful greenway system, but there is no money in the budget for greenways this next fiscal year. Nothing for open space preservation. If the board was able to find tens of millions of dollars to bring us the Playboy Channel, surely they can come up with a way to get us something important.