Cristóbal's blog

OCDP breakfast

I went to the Orange County Democratic Party legislative breakfast this morning. I did a play-by-play with Twitter and recorded a fair amount of audio with my phone.

Residential blue light call boxes

This just hit my email inbox:

I am writing you because of your leadership and involvement in Carolina Open Source Initiative over the past year. On Monday, March 5th at 7:00 p.m. the Chapel Hill Town Council will take a critical vote on the installation of pedestrian-level lighting and blue light call boxes in Chapel Hill residential areas. This vote will allow the installation of these initiatives to begin immediately as proposed by the student body. These safety initiatives will increase safety around our campus in the residential areas that we live. The residents of Rosemary, Mallette, Church, Short, Ransom, and McCauley Streets will be the most effected by this resolution; therefore student support is vital. I understand that during exams times most are not able to come out to the meeting at the town hall, yet it is critical that the council hear your support of this issue.

Transfer Tax robocall

I just got a robocall from a group calling itself "Citizens for a better Orange County" that opposes the Transfer Tax. It calls the tax the "Home Tax," which is clearly wrong on two levels. Firstly, the proposed tax is on all land sales, and secondly it is an attempt to falsely personalize this tax for local homeowners. Oh, and it fails to mention an important detail: the tax rate would be 0.4%. That's right: four tenths of a percent. That's one thousand dollars on a $250k hypothetical home. Sounds like too much money? Well, what are the alternatives? If this is defeated, the only two alternatives that have been seriously discussed are a sales tax (the most regressive tax possible) and a property tax increase. A property tax increase would be a home tax. Everything about the robocall was misleading and dishonest.

The call directs people to a website that I won't link to here. The website refers to "Tom Holt" as their treasurer and "Mark Zimmerman" as their spokesperson. A bit of googling gives:

 

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