By a majority vote, the Durham City Council voted on June 6 to amend the Durham City Manager’s recommended budget by allocating almost $650,000 for increasing pay to the City of Durham’s part-time workers. With this decision, all City of Durham workers – not only permanent full-time workers, but also part-time seasonal workers – will earn no less than the city’s living wage standard ($15.46/hour as of July 1, 2019).

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We are excited to announce our January membership meeting. This is a great opportunity to find out more about what we have planned for this year, and to learn how you can get more involved with our efforts. This January's meeting will highlight growing economic inequality in Durham, and will feature the efforts of our Economic Inequality Action Team to address the issue.

Durham People's Alliance January Membership Meeting
Thursday, January 30, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Center for Responsible Lending (302 W. Main St., Durham 27701)

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The Durham Library System will be hosting a film screening of "My Brooklyn: The Real Story Behind the Gentrification of America's Hippest City“ followed by a discussion titled "Gentrification or Economic Growth: Good or Bad?”

This movie and discussion will be a great way for Durham to learn about the common problems and solutions we share with Brooklyn with regard to economic inequality and the politics of urban development.

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PA Welcomes New Organizer: Garrett Dixon

People’s Alliance is pleased to announce Garrett Dixon has accepted the position of Chapter Organizer! Garrett is a Raleigh native and has a BA in Government from Cornell University. His thesis project was in transit oriented design practices. He brings a wealth of political experience to the position. In 2011, Garrett served as a Field Organizer with the Wake County Coordinated Campaign in support of the Wake County School Board and successfully won five out of five school board races removing Tea Party control from the board. In 2012 he served as Research Coordinator for the North Carolina Democratic Party, Bob Etheridge’s statewide Field Director, and GOTV Organizer with Obama For America.

From filling buses headed to Raleigh for Moral Monday to working for Economic Equality in the City tax code, PA is hard at work pushing for our progressive values in our community and state. Continue reading for updates on our Action Teams, important meeting dates, and more. Have a PA story to tell for our next newsletter? Let us know!

Statement of the Durham People's Alliance Regarding Issues in the 2013-14 Budget of the City of Durham

 

Durham People's Alliance advocated a small property tax increase to cover the City's budget shortfall  for residential garbage pickup and also urged no change in basic bus fares.  We respectfully opposed the City Manager's proposal to fix the former with a new garbage fee of $1.50 per month ($18.00/year).

 

The City Council heard us and others very well regarding bus fares, but a majority of the Council took the wrong path in our view by adopting the manager's garbage fee and then increasing it to help maintain existing bus fares.  In a Council work session that effectively finalized the budget, a majority of the Council supported the Mayor's proposal to increase the garbage fee to $1.80 per month ($21.60/year) and use the revenues thus freed up in the Solid Waste Department to cover most of the hole in transit finances.

 

Durham People's Alliance continues to believe that garbage service should have been covered with a property tax increase of slightly more than a half cent ($0.0052 per $100 of property value).  We would have supported increasing that rate to $0.0063 to also cover the bus service shortfall.

 

No one likes property tax increases, but what would a rate increase of $0.0063 per $100 of value have actually meant for Durham homeowners?  Instead of $21.60 a year in garbage fees, the owner of a home valued at $100,000 would have paid $6.30.  The owner of a $200,000 home would have paid $12.60.  The owner of a $300,000 home would have paid $18.90.

 

Obviously, the property tax is more progressive in the economic sense than a flat fee.  It tracks property wealth.  The garbage fee, like all broadly applied flat fees, is regressive.  It will take a larger percentage of income from a Durham resident the lower that person's income is.

 

And since the new fee will be added to city water bills, it will worsen the problem that at least some low-income citizens face in paying on time and maintaining service.  These already hard-pressed people include families that rent houses or rent apartments in buildings of four units or fewer.

 

For these and other reasons, progressivity in taxation is a core liberal principle that People's Alliance strongly supports, and always will.  We support this principle regardless of the amount of money involved, and always will.

 

But we also recognize that conservative legislators in Washington and in Raleigh are working to starve local governments of the federal and state aid they need.  It is becoming increasingly difficult for city and county governments to deliver basic services at a reasonable cost to the public.   In fact, part of the agenda of conservative elites is to force local governments to increase sales taxes, fees, and property taxes if they want to maintain decent public services.

 

Durham People's Alliance urges the City Council to publicly identify this agenda as the cause of its fiscal problems and a major cause of the resulting social problems it has to deal with. 

 

We would welcome opportunities to support local leaders in calling for progressive taxation at the federal and state levels and for more financial assistance from those governments for local needs.  A fairer federal and state tax structure would allow us to avoid the painful choice of fees versus property taxes in paying for basic city services.