After six months of consideration, deliberation and a unanimous vote of endorsement by an appointed ad hoc committee, Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg presented his 2021 budget to Charleston City Council for the first time in late October. The irony is not lost on us, and we are sure is it not on you, that during those same six months, the Charleston we all know was hit as hard as any city in the country by the collateral economic and social effects of a global pandemic and national unrest. And we knew it.
Given the realities of our times and the actual and measurable economic burden 2020 has inflicted on the citizens and small businesses in our community, we could not have imagined that the budget would propose property tax increases (a combination of tax rate increase and a rollback of the heretofore sacred local option sales tax credit) of historic proportions.