(Bel Air, MD) – - Effective November 20, 2009 Harford County Government will provide a new online research tool on the Harford County Government website that will enable citizens to view the details concerning their current year Real Property Tax, Property Assessment, Bay Restoration Fund fee, and Water and Sewer charges.
Property owners will have information at their fingertips that allows them to view property taxes, Bay Restoration Fund fees, or water and sewer charges that are owed to Harford County Government. The site also allows bills to be paid electronically.
Other features of the new online site include detailed property tax data that is broken down into the amounts attributed to County, State, and highway taxes and any homestead or homeowner credits that have been applied. There is also a direct link to the Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation real property information.
A bill to repeal Harford County’s development impact fee lost a co-sponsor and was defeated in a 6 to 1 vote of the Harford County Council on November 3 (Tuesday). Councilman Chad Shrodes was a co-sponsor of the repeal effort, but asked for his name to be removed from the bill just prior to the council vote, leaving fellow sponsor Dion Guthrie as the sole supporter of the failed bill.
In a related move, a bill to reduce the amount of the impact fee was introduced by every member of the Harford County Council, except Guthrie. Guthrie told The Dagger he didn’t plan to support the bill, which he said would cut the impact fee on a single family home from just over $8,200 to $6,000, lower the fee on a townhouse to $4,200 and on all other structures to $1,200. Guthrie called the bill a “waste of paperwork”. Guthrie ...Continue Reading
A bill to repeal Harford County’s impact fee created some strange bedfellows when it was first introduced by Dion Guthrie, a Democrat representing Edgewood and Joppatowne and Chad Shrodes, a Republican representing the rural north.
Now, the repeal effort has sparked a rift among the leaders of the anti-tax Tea Party movement and drawn a number of local organizations into the fray. The bill is scheduled for what may become a lively hearing October 20th (today) at 7 p.m. in the County Council Chambers at 212 S. Bond Street in Bel Air.
The impact fee offsets the impact of new household creation on the cost of public schools by dedicating revenue specifically to public school construction needs.
Bel Air Tea Party organizer Tony Passaro would be expected to join other anti-tax advocates and support the repeal, but he sent a recent email to the members of the Harford County ...Continue Reading
Do you support a tax increase to pay for recently-built schools? Should Red Pump Elementary School or other school construction projects be stopped?
If your answer is NO to either of these, then oppose Bill 09-29, School Development Impact Fee, because this Bill stops the school impact fees charged on new homes.
New homes bring more kids into the school system. History reveals how many additional kids, on average, will come to school from those houses. Without new homes, we wouldn’t need to build new school capacity. (Renovate, yes, but not increase the total space for more students.)
Now consider BRAC. We’re told that the next few years will bring tens of thousands of new, high-income workers to Harford. For every 1,000 new houses they buy, their impact fees provide over $8,000,000. ...Continue Reading
The following letter was received from Tea Party organizer and House of Delegates candidate Patrick McGrady:
Editor,
Since July 2005, the Harford County government has levied an Impact Tax on every new home construction permit. The idea of the Impact Tax seems noble enough- the money raised from the tax goes into the Harford County Public Schools Capital Budget account so that it must be used only for new school development, property acquisition, or school renovation. These homebuyers are being unfairly double-taxed, this tax is keeping productive construction projects on hold, and this is keeping hard-working Harford County workers out of work on and State Unemployment rolls.
Here in Harford County, we pay property taxes at the County and municipal level. On a home that is assessed at $250,000, the annual County portion of taxes amount to $2,705. This tax amount is the property owner’s share of the County Government, including school construction. ...Continue Reading
