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Thoughts on roads and Beebe expansion

June 15, 2017

So the "Beebe unveils new plans for expansion" June 9 article said there will be an in-patient surgical center for short-stay procedures, at its satellite on Route 24.

The distance from Beebe on John J. Williams Highway to Beebe on Savannah Road is, depending on which route one chooses, 3.9 miles, 4.4 miles or 5.5 miles - and nine to 13 minutes (at the moment I looked; that will vary by season, day and time).

My sense is that most of the developable land in postal Rehoboth has already been developed, but a great deal of postal Lewes is today farmland, and is likely to be ripe for "cashing in on" in the next 10 to 20 years. Traffic on the John J. Williams Highway is never light during daylight hours, and that road is just two lanes, except for the portion near Coastal Highway.

Sussex County is in the midst of writing its 2018 Comprehensive Plan, and as those who attended the recent Land Use Forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Sussex County titled "Will the Comprehensive Plan Have Teeth?" now know, what matters in the comprehensive plan is not the words - those seem to be merely advisory to our five-member Sussex County Council. What is mandatory is the maps. The maps will have the force of law.

If those maps don't say that development belongs in these places and not in those places, development can go anywhere, no matter what the words say, if I understand correctly what the speakers told the attendees.

What do you want those maps to say? Anything goes? Checkerboard is fine? or "There are limits, and priorities, and here's exactly what they are"?

Do you want more development along these already overburdened roads? Do you want to pay for the kinds of roads that will support the additional traffic, so that on a daily basis, commuters, those doing errands or visiting their doctors, or being transported to the hospital in Lewes will be traveling on roads designed to support the traffic that further development will produce?

And how should those roads be paid for? To the extent that they are a county responsibility - their widening, their repaving, occasional plowing, patrolling - the only taxes that are reliable are (1) the Real Estate Transfer Taxes, which the county only gets to collect on properties in the unincorporated areas, since the towns get the transfer taxes within their borders; and (2) the county property tax. Our five County Council representatives are extremely proud of not having

increased the property tax millage rate ($0.445 per $100 of assessed value) in 27 years. Of course this means that Sussex is basing 2017 property taxes on assessments that were made in 1974! (The median age in Sussex County is 47, and our assessments are nearly that old!)

Land has not risen evenly in value over the intervening 43 years: oceanfront and many incorporated areas have appreciated far more than unincorporated areas, and land served by Coastal Highway faster than land farther from it.

Every new road increases the land value. So who should pay for it?

Back to County Council's revenue problem: how do they get more revenue if the Grand List isn't rising along with land values? They say yes to development. Checkerboard, leapfrog, anything goes! Reap transfer taxes and the taxes on the new buildings (in the unincorporated areas), at someone's assessment of what they would have been worth in 1974. That's asking the impossible of the assessor.

Rehoboth Beach wisely reassessed all its properties a few years ago. Some people's taxes rose - those near the ocean, and those with the oldest homes, mostly. Others' taxes fell - those farther from the ocean, those which had been built in the preceding 10 or 15 years, mostly. Empty lots in the ocean block, which had been paying a pittance, might have seen that pittance double.

(How much? Well, Dolle's assessment went from $45,900 for the land and $77,250 for the building, with Rehoboth Beach property tax of $2,192 in about 2012, to $336,000 for the land and $28,512 for the building, with a property tax, at 4.0 mills, of $146. My newish home went from an assessed value of $32,625 with a Rehoboth Beach tax of $581, to an assessment of $1,168,000 and a tax of $467. Empty lots and lots with older homes often saw a significant increase - but few rose to levels that owners could be troubled by.)

Every year Sussex County waits to redistribute the tax load is another year in which some are overpaying - mostly people in modest homes - and others are being subsidized - mostly those made accessible by the widened Coastal Highway and benefited by beach renourishment.
Emergency vehicles headed for Beebe's Emergency Room can probably get traffic to "make way" for them to get by, even on overburdened two-lane Route 24. But a significant share of the people arriving at Beebe's emergency room are in their own or a friend's car, without those advantages. These roads just can't bear increased loads without endangering us.

Perhaps Beebe can add a triage center to the walk-in and surgical center, and provide ambulance service when needed to make the last four miles a faster trip. But the county has a role to play too, and as Sussex's Planning and Zoning Commission is writing its 2018 Comprehensive Plan: making sure that development happens in the right places and that it doesn't outpace infrastructure is vital!

Get those 2018 Comprehensive Plan maps right!

Wyn Achenbaum
Rehoboth Beach

 

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