Crankin, I'm sure by your comment you have no idea that roads in NC are only paid for by the gas tax. Fire dept is only funded by personal property taxes and the schools, and police are also partially funded by personal property taxes. The property taxes basically fund the county and city on their operating expenses. For the most part state income and sales taxes fund the school systems NOT property taxes. Some of the larger counties are "donor" counties which means they send more money to the state in sales and income taxes than what they get back. The money they do not get back is sent to poorer areas of the state for those areas to fund their schools and other things they need. So truthfully it does NOT matter where you live because if you live in a large county like Mecklanberg you're funding schools for other parts of the state. If you live in a smaller county you may be getting help from the larger counties or you may be in a break even county. I actually lived in a "break even" county. Oh and for paying for public transportation the ONLY thing that funds it is the fees you pay for actually using it. Taxes do not pay for it at all. Due to costs going up, they are currently raising fees AND cutting routes. That is mostly due to the rise in gas prices.


shootstar, about 4-5 years ago Charlotte built their first light rail line. It only services the southern part of the city, but everything I've read and heard is that it has been very sucessful. They are in the process of just now starting the 2nd line which will run about 5 miles from Charlotte to the university area. I'm very happy to see that. They had originally wanted it to run another 3 miles, but they don't have the financing to do that right now, so are going to build what they can. The 3rd line they want to build (which would go to near where I used to live) may never get built. 3 of the 4 cities along that line don't want it unless they are guaranteed all kinds of business and revenue coming in along the line and for some unknown reason they want to use existing rail that is owned and operated by freight trains and NOT respect their schedules. So the freight trains have said either you run your routes around us or build your own. So I doubt that line will ever get built at this point. I was very supportive of it when I first heard about it as I still lived there at the time. Now where I currently live they are actually working on more bike routes and bike lanes vs doing anything at all with public transportation. Which actually I get here. The main employer is the Marine Base. Base housing will allow public transportation, but the base it's self will not due to security reasons. Truthfully without public transportation running routes that would go on base and go to several different areas of the base it just really isn't feasible here as there are no other large employers. Basically the city is around 80,000 (maybe closer to 100,000) now with the extra troops that have brought in. However, of that at least have are military or military families and another quarter to a third are civil service that work on base.