Backtalk: “I may often disagree with the INDY’s politics…”

Last month, INDY staff writer Lena Geller and freelancer Lee Gans published a detailed investigation into how a Durham County board granted billions of dollars in property value reductions to corporate landlords and companies like Blackstone while ordinary homeowners largely stayed on the hook for higher property taxes. City leaders—in the midst of planning for the next fiscal year’s budget and counting on projected tax revenues that wouldn’t materialize—didn’t find out what happened until April. Readers had lots of thoughts about the story. 

From reader Brad Davis, via email:

I may often disagree with the Indy’s politics, but I have to say that [the] article on the Durham property tax shortfall was enormously well-researched, extremely well-presented, and comprehensively outstanding.

Durham County government has been essentially dysfunctional for years now (City government is much better run and reasonably accountable). The DPS debacle, 3 County Managers in 4 years, and now these property assessment issues are all testament to this fact.

Thank you on behalf of residential property owners for covering this vital issue.

From reader Pam Davis, via email:

Thank you for an excellent article! Our home was revalued higher than larger, more expensive, recently sold homes in the neighborhood. My husband painstakingly documented this, went before the board and had his case dismissed without a hearing. I would not be surprised to find out that inequities in the handling of residential and commercial reviews were not accidental.

And from reader John Dempsey, via email:

Thanks to Lena Geller and Lee Gans for the fantastically researched and informative article on Durham’s recent tax revaluation saga, ‘Falling Short’. They [took] a complex process (by design?) and laid it out for us. The entire valuation process seems off, almost as if it is set up to benefit insiders, developers, big business owners while being as opaque about it as possible. Please continue to flip rocks over. Rural Orange County suffered a similar fate with a giant shift of the County tax burden thrown onto their backs.

Also last month, freelance writer Jasmine Gallup published a story about the rise of charter schools in Wake County and how they’ve cost the public school district $500 million in local funding in the past 15 years. 

From reader and independent journalist Jeff Bryant, via email:

Your recent article on [school choice in Wake County] covered a lot of essential issues regarding the influx of charter schools … but there was little to no consideration of why charter schools are in Wake County in the first place. In my investigative reporting on that issue, I came to the conclusion that 

“The shifting policy justifications for charters—whether they’re a civil rights cause, an agent for improving the performance of public schools, or a necessary choice for choice’s sake—don’t clearly explain why charter schools show up where they do. 

If charters are necessary for equity, then why were they showing up in affluent northeast Wake County? If charters are needed in places where the state’s public schools are the lowest-performing, then Wake County was well down the list of districts in need. And if choice for choice’s sake is the goal, then the state’s many rural school districts—where schools are often few and far between, and parents don’t have the wherewithal for private school or homeschooling—seemed much more in need of new state-supported education options.” 

What does explain why charters are in Wake County has more to do with business decisions than good public policy: the cost and availability of land that can be turned into a profitable asset, access to families who can afford to take on transportation and other costs charters externalize onto their “customers,” and proximity to diverse school populations that include parents who want to send their children to a school with the ability, through enrollment practices or exclusionary treatment, to filter out less desirable students.  

And from reader Richard Bowdon, via email:

Your article … left out a very important fact, one always omitted by public school spokespeople and advocates. When a student enrolls elsewhere, the public schools don’t only lose revenue. They also lose the expense of educating that student. Yes, managing declining enrollment … or enrollment increasing less than it might have … puts a burden on administrators to manage that lower market share. But that’s part of their job, to budget for the enrollment they had, not the enrollment they wish they had.

Finally, freelance writer Storms Reback profiled Bertha Bradley, better known as Mama Cookie, one of the Triangle’s most visible labor rights activists. 

From reader Gann Herman, via email:

Thanks so much for featuring my friend Mama Cookie—I’ve learned so much from her and am proud to be fighting with her as an ally of USSW. She practices what she preaches and Durham is blessed to call her ours. She needs to rest sometimes, though!

Comment on this story at [email protected].