James Howell | Jefferson Post

The clubhouse at Jefferson Landing is the central hub for activities in the community.

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Jefferson Landing has been selected by “Where to Retire” magazine as one of the country’s top 50 best master-planned communities in the United States.

“This is the second year we have received this honor,” said Jimmy Miller, the director of real estate sales for Jefferson Landing. “It’s a big deal; to be recognized as one of the top 50 places in the country.”

“The Short List: 50 Best Master-Planned Communities in the United States,” is the only list of its kind, focusing on communities rather than locales and featuring first-person testimonials by current residents.

Due to the mountain scenery and overall atmosphere, Miller said Jefferson Landing is a prime location for retirees.

“People are friendlier here,” said Miller. “It’s a throwback to the way things used to be.”

Jefferson Landing features amenities like a golf course, two full-service restaurants, a river park, tennis courts, a swimming pool and on-site lodging for visiting guests, as highlighted by “Where to Retire” magazine.

Also, Miller said Jefferson Landing is a “debt-free community,” which is a major selling point.

According to Miller, several community developers have “gone under” in the past few years due to the rough economy. When a developer succumbs to debt owed on a development (like Jefferson Landing), residents will keep their homes, but their property values will plummet.

“People like having the security. Knowing the community isn’t going under is huge,” said Miller.

According to “Where to Retire” publisher Karen Northridge, living in the chosen communities offers other benefits as well.

“Time and again, the retirees interviewed for this story told us their neighborhoods give them opportunities to try different activities, connect with like-minded people and in the process, build brand-new lifestyles,” Northridge said. “For these retirees, their communities provide much more than comfortable, attractive housing; they also serve as a catalyst for residents to reinvent themselves.”

In order to compile this list, “Where to Retire” editors began gathering and evaluating information on more than 100 communities across the nation nearly a year ago.

According to Miller, Jefferson Landing’s residents spoke well the community, which was the leading factor for the Landing’s selection on the top 50 list.

“It seems like everyone who lives here really loves it,” said Miller about the residents.

The chosen communities offer homes that vary in price, from manufactured homes starting in the $80,000-range, to site-built, single-family homes that begin in the $120,000-range. Half the developments are active-adult communities, where residents must meet minimum age requirements.

The selected communities are not ranked, but rather profiled in alphabetical order by state, and a two-page chart gives a snapshot of all 50 choices and a guide to their amenities.

The 50 master-planned communities selected for this list came from 17 different states; seven of the top 50 selections are from North Carolina.

The selections earned their place in the top 50 by breaking new ground with amenities such as a pavilion with a heated pool and a sports complex among views of the Blue Ridge Mountains at Cummings Cove Golf & Country Club in North Carolina, an arts center to display residents’ work at Robson Ranch in Eloy, Arizona and expansive open space and a focus on green living at Harmony in Florida to mention a few. Others offer workplaces inside the gates, dog parks and community gardens – options far beyond the traditional golf courses and clubhouses.

In addition to the top 50 communities, “Where to Retire” includes the “Hall of Fame,” a small group of established neighborhoods previously recognized by the magazine.

This July/August issue marks the eighth biennial honor roll of America’s best master-planned communities compiled by “Where to Retire.”

The magazine, launched in 1992, is published six times each year. Every issue profiles top retirement towns, both undiscovered and well-known, and master-planned communities that cater to retirees.

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The tax reform debate in the General Assembly has moved in recent days from frustrating and confusing to simply embarrassing.

It hasn’t been about reform for a while. House and Senate leaders keep coming up with different ways to do the same thing – cut taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations and pay for it by slashing education funding and making low and moderate income families pay more.

It’s all about cutting taxes now, not reforming anything.

In the last week the wheels have completely come off as Senate leaders are offering plan after impulsive plan in a desperate attempt to come up with something that Gov. Pat McCrory and House leaders will at least partially support.

The New Bern Sun-Journal reports that Senator Norm Sanderson told a crowd of realtors in Carteret County Monday that the fifth and latest version of a Senate tax plan would maintain the current deduction for mortgage interest payments that the realtors support.

The tax cut bill the Senate preliminarily approved last week would eliminate the mortgage interest deduction, but that was the fourth edition of the tax proposal. Senate leaders have apparently moved on to a different plan, the mysterious fifth incarnation.

Tuesday afternoon Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger postponed the final vote on version four to Wednesday after saying that there were conversations underway with House leaders and Gov. McCrory.

Rushed and poorly thought out plans have become the norm in the tax debate, especially in the Senate, as lawmakers consider making massive changes that could reduce state revenue by several billion dollars over the next few years and force more deep cuts to education and human services.

It was only a little over a month ago that Berger released the details of the first edition of the plan with a slick campaign style video and website touting the expansion of the sales tax to food and medicine and dozens of services currently not subject to the tax.

Version four that passed a Senate vote last week was just a big tax cut paid for by blowing a giant hole in the state budget. Berger’s website now calls the fourth version of the plan the largest tax cut in North Carolina history. The word reform does not appear.

That plan passed the Senate Finance Committee last week after committee members heard from four senior economists from North Carolina who pointed out that there is no consensus about the fundamental assumption behind the proposal, that slashing taxes on corporations and the wealthy will spur economic development.

A fifth economist also spoke, a recent college graduate now working at the right-wing Tax Foundation in Washington, who interestingly came to Raleigh with a detailed analysis of the plan that had just been released to lawmakers. He claimed that research clearly showed that lower taxes encourage economic growth.

But the research is not conclusive at all, as a detailed report released Monday afternoon by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities made clear.

And those are not the only troubling interpretations of economic evidence that are informing the current tax debate. Many lawmakers are pointing to other claims by the Tax Foundation that the fourth version of the Senate tax cut plan will increase the state’s standing in the group’s business climate rankings.

They never mention that the ranking system itself is controversial. The Tax Foundation is committed to lowering all taxes and has created a ranking system designed to further that objective that cherry picks data and makes unsupportable assumptions about the impact of tax rates on economic activity.

Then there is the absurd legislative process. The tax packages are coming and going so rapidly, it’s hard for the public to have any idea what’s happening, much less understand the changes enough to let the people who represent them know what they think.

This is the biggest decision lawmakers will make in their two-year term. It will have serious ramifications for the state budget for years, affecting education, health care, criminal justice and every other part of our public infrastructure.

Multi-billion dollar decisions should not be made in secret backroom meetings or by frantically revising versions of huge tax cuts on the fly. And they should not be based on controversial economic claims made by hand-picked ideologues.

Let’s have a thoughtful, open, and honest debate about changing our tax code with plenty of time for the public and experts of all stripes to weigh in. Nobody will lose anything. Most of the current proposals call for phasing in the tax cuts anyway.

Let’s leave tax reform for next year so we can get it right.

We simply cannot afford to get it wrong.

Fitzsimon is the executive director of NC Policy Watch.