Good article… however, our government is out of control; and they are spending like drunken sailors. They need some training wheels…this bill will help to keep them accountable.
Local governments (counties) have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, in my opinion. Time to get serious about budget cuts. The answer is not squeezing hard working residents for more and more each year. For example, see the recent Clay News & Views stories on how we were essentially paying a duplicitous salary to a second and unneeded comptroller ("The local 'comptroller story' covered by Clay News & Views centers on the resignation of the County Commission Auditor, Heather Boucher, following a controversial attempt to secure a $44,000 pay raise"). That was great reporting and I submit we need more of that type of reporting, tighter spending control, and less emphasis on generating more and more revenue.
Aren't there going to be several propositions on the ballot regarding property tax exemptions? I completely agree with the author that you can't just cut taxes across the board without either having to extract taxes through other means such as millage rate manipulation (as Clay county has done numerous times to get around the SOH property value cap on primary homes), raising sales tax, or cutting the budget to the point where counties across Florida will be struggling to provide even the most basic of services.
I personally believe that the solution to this mess, if what Jason Garcia says is true, is to remove the cap on property taxes in Florida and make the greedy corporations and ultra elite people pay their fair share of taxes. It's ridiculous that the rest of us have to pay, for each dollar of value of our home, but the rich get a max tax cap on their property values. If the rich can't afford the taxes on their ultra mansions perhaps they should settle for a more modest, quaint mansion instead. Maybe then Florida would be able to offer tax breaks for the rest of us who work for a living.
Good article… however, our government is out of control; and they are spending like drunken sailors. They need some training wheels…this bill will help to keep them accountable.
Local governments (counties) have a spending problem, not a revenue problem, in my opinion. Time to get serious about budget cuts. The answer is not squeezing hard working residents for more and more each year. For example, see the recent Clay News & Views stories on how we were essentially paying a duplicitous salary to a second and unneeded comptroller ("The local 'comptroller story' covered by Clay News & Views centers on the resignation of the County Commission Auditor, Heather Boucher, following a controversial attempt to secure a $44,000 pay raise"). That was great reporting and I submit we need more of that type of reporting, tighter spending control, and less emphasis on generating more and more revenue.
Aren't there going to be several propositions on the ballot regarding property tax exemptions? I completely agree with the author that you can't just cut taxes across the board without either having to extract taxes through other means such as millage rate manipulation (as Clay county has done numerous times to get around the SOH property value cap on primary homes), raising sales tax, or cutting the budget to the point where counties across Florida will be struggling to provide even the most basic of services.
I personally believe that the solution to this mess, if what Jason Garcia says is true, is to remove the cap on property taxes in Florida and make the greedy corporations and ultra elite people pay their fair share of taxes. It's ridiculous that the rest of us have to pay, for each dollar of value of our home, but the rich get a max tax cap on their property values. If the rich can't afford the taxes on their ultra mansions perhaps they should settle for a more modest, quaint mansion instead. Maybe then Florida would be able to offer tax breaks for the rest of us who work for a living.