All over Florida, the governments are coming out against Amendment 3, the one that will cut property taxes on homestead property taxes that aren’t for the school board. In its final form, the property taxes on a person’s primary residence that aren’t going to schools will be cut to zero for most people. That will translate to about a 15% cut in local and county tax revenues. The remainder of city and county taxes in Florida come from commercial property, second homes, and other sources.
That isn’t a large cut, when you consider that some counties are collecting 1.5 to 2 times as much in property taxes as they were a decade ago. So instead of collecting that, they will only get 1.3 to 1.7 as much as they were collecting. Oh, the humanity.
The tactic they are choosing is to say that services everyone wants will be cut, because of course they will. Everyone (or most everyone) wants police, fire, and schools funded. So they are rolling out threats of cutting those services. They are also already raising taxes in preparation for it passing. For example, the Osceola county school board is saying this cut will affect them (even though the law isn’t touching school taxes), so they are putting a millage rate increase on the ballot. They want to increase school taxes in Osceola county by $62 million. The school budget for that county is $2 billion, so this represents a 3% increase in the school’s budget, but an 18.8% increase in the school board’s current 5.3 mil tax. Then they go to the old “safety” excuse:
State law mandates that schools have at least one armed security officer during the school day. Osceola County schools are currently staffed by school resource officers through a cost-sharing partnership between the district and local municipalities — including the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, St. Cloud Police Department and Kissimmee Police Department. Shanoff said that arrangement could be jeopardized if local governments face their own budget constraints, especially as voters statewide consider Amendment 3, which would overhaul state property taxes.
“If the municipalities run short of funds, the responsibility of staffing armed security at schools comes back to the school district, and we will have to go with private armed security, different than having actual law enforcement on campus,” Shanoff said.
That’s not what the law says. There is a provision to allow teachers to be armed, which wouldn’t cost a fraction of what it costs to maintain police on campus, but schools won’t do it even though they all receive grant money from the state to implement it. Osceola county is saving money by contracting the Guardian program to a private security company for armed, uniformed security guards, and using these security guards to replace armed police officers. Since the guards make significantly less money than cops, the school district is likely profiting from the program.
Osceola county governments are flush with cash. Kissimmee fire department recently gave their fire department 15% more time off by adding a fourth shift, but with the same pay. Just in February, that same fire department bought a new heavy rescue truck to replace the old one. That new truck cost more than a million dollars. Saint Cloud is spending $12.5 million on knocking down an old fire station to replace it with a new one, and another $10 million on another new station. St Cloud only has 108,000 residents, but has a $210 million annual budget, or more than $2000 a year for every man, woman, and child.
The local and city governments are flush with cash, and I am betting there is a lot of money being tossed at “social media influencers” to Astroturf support to prevent the gravy train from being cut.
I am deeply in favor of Amendment 3.
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