Jacksonville City Council members want to hear from you during the following town hall meetings! Let them know that you want no more taxes!
City Council Town Hall Meeting – Districts 7, 9 and 10
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
FSCJ Downtown Campus – 401 W. State Street, Jacksonville Florida
City Council Town Hall Meeting – Districts 12 and 14
Thursday, April 08, 2010 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
FSCJ Kent Campus, 3939 Roosevelt Boulevard, Jacksonville Florida
City Council Town Hall Meeting – Districts 8 and 11
Thursday, April 22, 2010 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
FSCJ North Campus, 4501 Capper Road, Jacksonville Florida
City Council Town Hall Meeting – Districts 1, 2, 3 and 13
Thursday, May 06, 2010 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
FSCJ South Campus, 11901 Beach Boulevard, Jacksonville Florida
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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.
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Last Tuesday (July 28), the Jacksonville City Council voted on the proposed millage rate for the 2009/2010 city budget. Here is how they voted.
The following City Council members voted to lower your taxes by keeping the millage rate as it currently is, specifically 8.48 mills.
Bill Bishop, Richard Clark, John Crescimbeni, Daniel Davis, Johnny Gaffney, Art Graham, Ray Holt, Glorious Johnson, Denise Lee, Clay Yarborough
The following City Council members voted to raise your taxes by 12 percent as proposed by Mayor Peyton.
Reggie Brown, Michael Corrigan, Ronnie Fussell, Kevin Hyde, Warren Jones, Stephen Joost, Don Redman, Art Shad, Jack Webb
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Well, budget season is now upon us in Jacksonville. In his recent budget address, Mayor John Peyton asked for a 12 percent increase in our millage rate. According to Peyton, without this tax hike, we will have to make deep cuts in services vital to the Jacksonville taxpayer. We are talking about closing fire stations. Parks will become jungles without adequate landscaping. Our streets will be overflowing with criminals if the Jacksonville Journey is not funded for another year. Peyton’s speech enters the world of hyperbole when he stated “Is it your plan to shut down government?”. Chicken Little is no longer saying that the sky is falling. Instead, he just threw up his wings and left town.
What makes the budget process insane is that in a scant two weeks after the budget was unveiled, the City Council must decide what the initial millage rate will be for the city budget. Yes, that is two weeks to study the budget and determine if a millage rate increase is needed or whether more cuts in the budget are possible. Of course, the millage rate can be set lower later once budgets cuts have been identified. But once the genie is let out of the bottle by giving the mayor his millage rate increase, reducing it could be harder to do this once the mayor gets the momentum moving in his direction.
However, if we do not want the millage rate increase and we do not want the mayor’s three fees, we have to identify what to cut in the budget. The worst thing that we can do is to cut say 10 percent from everything in the budget. Not everything is equal in the budget. Public safety and roads are a far higher priority than the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission and the Cultural Council. Prioritizing city spending is crucial as we must cut from the budget those expenditures that are superfluous to its city’s central mission of providing essential services utilized by the vast majority of the public that cannot be provided by the private sector.
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