Beyond The Blueprint | 10.09.26 | Hosted by Brad Howard

Lake Norman touches four counties.

Iredell, Mecklenburg on this shore, Catawba and Lincoln on the west.

And there's a fifth.

If you head out of Davidson, there's an area of Cabarrus County, the corner where Mooresville's growth and Davidson's growth have begun to converge.

The lake doesn't know where those lines are.

Neither does the traffic.

Neither does the third-grader who needs a seat in a classroom.

But every decision about them gets made on one side of a line by people who answer to the voters on that side only.

That's not bad people.

That's how the maps were drawn a long time ago in a place that was a lot smaller and got a lot bigger.

So I'm taking you all the way around, and let's start in Tuesday night.

Tuesday night in Statesville, the Iredell County commissioners held a public hearing on something called Schedule of Values.

It sounds like the dullest document in the room, but it may be the most important one the county produces all year.

So in plain w- words, what this is, is a rule book.

It's the manual that the county's appraisers use to put values on your home, on your land, your shop, your farm, your, your, your business property.

The, the county says there are just over a hundred and ten thousand parcels in Iredell County, and every one of them gets a new value, so as of January twenty-- uh, January first, twenty twenty-seven.

The rule book comes first, your number comes second, the tax rate comes third months later.

Three separate steps, and the people mash them all together all the time.

And they adopted it Tuesday night, five to nothing.

That's from the county's own recap that was posted, uh, uh, yesterday.

The assessor, Andy Alexander, walked them through it, updated base rates, some depreciation adjustments, and the new categories for things that didn't used to exist out here.

Barndominiums, data centers, storage garage condos.

Now, that's the county side first, and it's a good one.

State law says that a county has to do this at least once every eight years.

Iredell does it every four.

Lake Norman touches four counties.

Iredell, Mecklenburg on this shore, Catawba and Lincoln on the west.

And there's a fifth.

If you head out of Davidson, there's an area of Cabarrus County, the corner where Mooresville's growth and Davidson's growth have begun to converge.

The lake doesn't know where those lines are.

Neither does the traffic.

Neither does the third-grader who needs a seat in a classroom.

But every decision about them gets made on one side of a line by people who answer to the voters on that side only.

That's not bad people.

That's how the maps were drawn a long time ago in a place that was a lot smaller and got a lot bigger.

So I'm taking you all the way around, and let's start in Tuesday night.

Tuesday night in Statesville, the Iredell County commissioners held a public hearing on something called Schedule of Values.

It sounds like the dullest document in the room, but it may be the most important one the county produces all year.

So in plain w- words, what this is, is a rule book.

It's the manual that the county's appraisers use to put values on your home, on your land, your shop, your farm, your, your, your business property.

The, the county says there are just over a hundred and ten thousand parcels in Iredell County, and every one of them gets a new value, so as of January twenty-- uh, January first, twenty twenty-seven.

The rule book comes first, your number comes second, the tax rate comes third months later.

Three separate steps, and the people mash them all together all the time.

And they adopted it Tuesday night, five to nothing.

That's from the county's own recap that was posted, uh, uh, yesterday.

The assessor, Andy Alexander, walked them through it, updated base rates, some depreciation adjustments, and the new categories for things that didn't used to exist out here.

Barndominiums, data centers, storage garage condos.

Now, that's the county side first, and it's a good one.

State law says that a county has to do this at least once every eight years.

Iredell does it every four.