A fee does the city no good if it doesn’t get paid. That is the issue with the stormwater and garbage fees. According to the Florida Times Union, 17% of the stormwater and garbage fees have not been paid to the city even though it appears to be more like 30% lately. The city would like to reduce this statistic to 5% by adding the fees to your property tax bill. When that happens, failure to pay the fees could get a lien placed on your property. With this motivational trick, the mayor is hoping to persuade Jacksonville residents to pay the unpopular fees.
The up side of putting the fees on the property tax bill is cost savings. The cost savings projected by the Central Operations department is about $737,000 per year. In a tough budget year, that is not exactly chump change. Billing customers is a major expense for businesses which explains why so many businesses like e-mailed billing notices and automatic debits which reduce this cost.
On the other hand, the down side is that the fees become more entrenched as they become easier to collect. Many of us were not happy with the fees mainly because they rolled back the property tax relief provided to us by the Florida Legislature in 2007 and which we taxpayers approved in 2008. Personally and I speak only for myself and not for Concerned Taxpayers, I have no problems with the fees in and of themselves and I actually like the idea of diversifying the city’s revenue base.
However, my problem with the fees is that the political establishment in Jacksonville was not willing to give up its obsession with spending other people’s money even when the Jacksonville taxpayer was clearly being overtaxed. Sometimes, the money is spent on indispensable services like police and fire suppression. Other times, it is spent on government charity and corporate welfare which I believe the taxpayer should not be forced to fund. Until Jacksonville city government restricts its responsibilities to the core functions of government (police, fire suppression, parks, etc) and not whatever pet project some City Council member or Mayor fancies at the moment, I will reject any tax increase that makes hard earned taxpayer money available to politicians to play with. That is especially true in hard times when a failure to pay the fees could lead to the loss of your home.
