Murphy supports ideas that hurt homeowners
As a lifelong Charles County resident and former president of the Southern Maryland Association of Realtors (SMAR), I felt compelled to respond to Debra Kahling and help identify what her letter missed — facts. SMAR is a local trade association, 1,700 members strong, which advocates on behalf of Southern Maryland property owners. Our members live here, pay taxes here, and we raise our families here.
As a Charles County property owner, let me share with the voters what the last four years have looked like for us under the “leadership” of Commissioners’ President Murphy.
The first anti-homeowner vote was to pass a transfer tax on every real estate transaction in this county. Every time you buy or sell a home, you have to pay an additional fee of .50 percent of the total purchase. For a $400,000 home, it’s an extra $2,000. The tax was supposed to fully fund our teachers — yet since 2015, the teachers didn’t get fully funded. I wonder where the extra $5-plus million annually has gone. Commissioners’ President Murphy, did you address this issue at your taxpayer funded town hall series?
1) The watershed downzoning took 9,800 private properties and turned 20 different type of zones into one — with no grandfathering or compensation for the loss of value. It removed property rights for these owners, both home and business. You want to build a single home on your land, you now need 20 acres. SMAR and 70 percent of the residents who stood together against the WCD repeatedly requested an independent financial study. It was denied and now we have a budget line item of almost $4 million dollars
in 2018 with a 7 percent proposed increase for 2019. Maybe you don’t live within the watershed, but guess who is paying for it now — you and me.
2) Property tax rate — in a world of semantics, our tax rate has “stayed the same,” yes, we are holding strong as the second highest property tax in Maryland. Each year, the state assesses the value of homes and the values have steadily increased. The state then sends the commissioners a proposed tax rate called the constant yield. Lowering to constant yield means the county collects the same amount of taxes as the year before — a fair situation. Four years straight, Murphy has collected extra revenue from property owners. In this coming fiscal year, it will collect up to $5 million more in additional revenues from 60,000 homeowners. At the property tax hearing, Murphy called the constant yield rate just hypothetical. Why doesn’t Murphy care about us having to pay more every year? Does he even pay property taxes like you and I?
At the end of the day, Murphy has cost me more money since he was elected in 2014, with every vote, in public and behind closed doors. And he has cost ever y single homeowner, all 60,000 of us, millions of dollars — up to 80 percent of the operating budget is thanks to you and me.
Brian Klaas, a lifelong resident who has invested in this county, is going to do one thing which will shock many — he is going to be a leader and he will listen to the residents. Too many big decisions are forced, like the $7 million animal shelter when we have 700-plus homeless school children without a shelter, shower or food. He will bring a commercial tax base and quality jobs instead of overtaxing the residents of Charles County. I urge you to join me in voting for military veteran, father and Charles County neighbor, Brian Klaas.
Bud Humbert, Charlotte Hall