Pless works against taxpayers
To the Editor:
State Rep. Mark Pless, R-Haywood, is facilitating property de-annexation with a group of current Town of Maggie Valley property owners. They are testing the water to see if they can put more dollars in their pockets, take tax dollars away from the Town and allow unfettered development to their parcels.
Pless clearly does not represent and protect all Town of Maggie Valley property owners.
Who is hurt by this action? All current and future Town of Maggie Valley taxpayers. It’s simple math — fewer properties paying taxes, those lost dollars become a burden to the balance of town taxpayers or services need to be reduced. If successful, this test case will degrade the tax base within Maggie Valley and could be deployed in other Pless-represented municipalities.
But the additional tax burden born by remaining Maggie Valley property owners isn’t the worst of it. It is the potential property value damage to properties adjacent to these “de-annexed” properties.
If de-annexation is successful, it allows those property owners to develop their property unfettered by Maggie Valley development rules. The county has limited oversight, so who knows what might be developed next door to your home. It makes sense this is the real goal of these property owners, to avoid Maggie Valley zoning and protective nuisance ordinances that safeguard adjacent owners and provide a level development playing field.
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The online professional real estate publicity page of one of the property owners involved in this test case indicates his real estate specialty is land. I don’t think any of these folks are claiming poverty so maybe, just maybe, it’s all about how they or future owners prefer to develop the land, neighbors be damned.
Angie E. Van Scyoc
Crabtree
