Last Tuesday night was a tremendous victory in the fight for the Concerned Taxpayer’s of Duval County. This was the most attended council that I can EVER remember seeing. The vote was deadlocked 9 – 9 as amendments for sensible budget cuts (things that Taxpayers should not spend one penny on) were ignored. They went on until 3 am last night and “recessed” until 11:00 am today. Although the City Council ultimately voted to raise your taxes today, they deliberated more than any other budget hearing in history.

Despite some unusual tomfoolery of “power failures”, you stayed so that you could be heard.

Thanks to all the First Coast Tea Party, The Republican Liberty Caucus, Libertarian Party of Duval County, Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County, Ferret Tax Protesters, small business owners and working families who came out to fight. This would not have been possible without each and every one of you!

Again, this was a huge victory for us. We fought last year, the year before that, the year before that, etc. It has become increasingly difficult for the tomfoolery to continue. More and more people come out and scrutinize how our hard earned money is being wasted on special interests for corporate, social and cultural welfare. The City has no business picking winners and losers in any of these areas. .

In the past, the righteous anger of the people over continued tax increases to fund special interests on the right and the left has been quickly forgotten. However, this year is different. WE WILL HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE IN THE SPRING ELECTIONS.

We have targeted the Habitual Tax Offenders for “unelection” in the spring with our operation Recidivism. The final details and logistics are being worked out now.

We have focused on those who are up for re-election in the spring and are not term limited. The list is being finalized now based on past voting records and other research we have been conducting to root out special interest ties and influence.

Also, we have in mind to target Habitual Tax Offenders who are term limited for City Council when they run for other political offices. WE WILL NOT FORGET.

Now, more than ever, all the groups that fight waste and corruption must continue to work for this common goal. It is perilous to let the special interests divide our common goal of fighting for the Taxpayer.

Please stay tuned for more information at:

www.teamtaxpayer.com

Best regards,

Victor L. Wihelm Jr
President Concerned Taxpayers Duval County

• Unemployment in Duval County and Florida is at a record high level! (Florida Times Union 3/26/2010)
• Floridians’ personal income has taken a hit and is now near the bottom of the nation! (Jacksonville Business Journal 3/25/2010)
• Unemployment continues to rise! (Jacksonville Business Journal 7/16/2010)
• Now, Mayor John Peyton wants to convince City Council to increase his three new taxes and the property tax rate again!
• Our garbage tax has already been doubled!
• No more tax hikes!

In 2007, Peyton broke his promise not to raise taxes “on his watch” with the creation of three new taxes.

In 2008, Peyton and the City Council expanded spending with the new Jacksonville Journey entitlement program.

In 2009, Peyton broke his promise again with increased property taxes in the middle of the worst economy in decades.

Taxes and government spending in Jacksonville are at an all time high. The Jacksonville economy simply can not afford another tax increase by Peyton and the City Council.

It’s time to end the Jacksonville Journey, Jacksonville Children’s Commission, and Jacksonville Economic Development Commission and let the taxpayers decide for themselves in which charities and economic development they wish to participate.

Contact your council members by phone or e-mail.

Remember to show up in force on September 28, 2010 for the Team Taxpayer Tailgate Party!  For more information, go to the Concerned Taxpayers meetup site.

Here is a budget proposed by the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County.  You can read more about this budget in the article in the Jacksonville Liberty Journal (page 1 and 6) that further explains the rationale used to develop it.  We need real spending cuts, not tax rate increases!

The City’s Budget vs. What We Can Afford

The title of this post is from the song Downtown sung by Petula Clark in the mid 1960s.  The song was inspired by composer-arranger Tony Hatch’s visit to New York City in which he extols the vibrant atmosphere of Broadway and Times Square.  Having been to New York City, I would agree with this characterization of Manhattan.  With its museums, nightspots and Central Park, New York City truly is the city that does not sleep!

If you read the recent Florida Times Union series on downtown Jacksonville, you get a sense that Jacksonville’s political leaders really want to transfer some of that vibrancy to Jacksonville’s city core.  According to the Florida Times Union, downtown Jacksonville is essentially dead in the weeknights and weekends and is short on residents and workers. What city leaders envision is a walkable downtown full of shops, restaurants, condominiums and lots of people frequenting and living in them. As usual, this vision requires tax money and city government planning.

Before we go flying off the cliff in our enthusiasm to keep moving forward with this vision, let us pause for a second and ask why we need a vibrant downtown.  Even if we agree that the downtown area should be different from what it currently is, is it possible for realize this new vision for downtown? How should we realize this vision? How much taxpayer money are we willing to sink into downtown to realize this vision?

First, we need to ponder is if there is a market for downtown living.  Despite what the movie Field of Dreams suggests, “if you build it, he will come” doesn’t necessarily work.   The United States’ economic graveyard is full of companies that have failed to understand their markets and found themselves in bankruptcy court despite all their efforts to get out of the holes in which they dug for themselves.  So our city leaders believe that 10,000 people living downtown are needed to attract retail development. But if even if we build the condominiums and apartments needed to house that many people and all the shops and restaurants needed to support them, will 10,000 people want to live downtown?  Maybe, the many attempts to jump start downtown development in Jacksonville have failed because there is not a large enough market for downtown living in Jacksonville.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that 10,000 people want to live downtown.  What is stopping them from doing so?  According to the Florida Times Union, approximately 2,600 people already live downtown.  That surely should be a good start towards growing the downtown area.  There may not be many retail establishments in downtown Jacksonville at the beginning, but this should change as more people pour into the area and create a need for a larger retail sector unless there are government policies that hinder growth in that sector and therefore hinder any further increase in the downtown population.  We should at least ask this question before we pick the pockets of Duval County taxpayers in another failed attempt to subsidize downtown development that may be too expensive to build due to regulations and taxes.  Also, according to the Florida Times Union, government agencies (federal, state and local) own nearly a third of downtown Jacksonville.  Could it be that they grabbed the choicest real estate in the downtown area for themselves and this is hindering downtown development?

Now let’s assume again that 10,000 people want to live downtown and there are no government barriers to doing so, should city government subsidize downtown development?  The problem with government subsidizing any activity is that it inevitably leads to inefficient usage of resources.  In the real world of unsubsidized commerce, businesses have to keep their expenses down and their revenues up.  Otherwise, they go out of business.  Subsidizing business activities reduces the incentives to do either or both of those.  Also, if business owners have to put up less of their own money when starting development projects, they are more willing to take bigger risks since they do not stand to lose as much money as they would if they are on the hook for the entire investment.  Finally, will the downtown development project pay for itself or will it continue to come back periodically to the public trough when it encounters rough times?

One suspects that the motivation for downtown development could come from the smart growth mantra that is so popular within the urban planning community.  Smart growth emphasizes compact development, mass transit, walkability and bike friendliness, mixed use areas (shops and office buildings in close proximity to residential neighborhoods), etc.  Much  of this is echoed in the Florida Times Union series on downtown development. Whatever the merits of smart growth, one would hope that downtown development would not be used as a stealth strategy for pushing smart growth on a city that is not as concerned about urban sprawl as the planners are.

The reason that free markets work is that they adapt to the changing needs of consumers.  If people want to live downtown in significant numbers, the market will respond to that need and downtown Jacksonville will grow.  The involvement of government in downtown development will only distort the market response and will lead to an outcome that satisfies the politicians and planners but not the consumers.

If this is not bad enough, the money is being awarded to Rhodes Stucco without competitive bidding. The exemption is based upon Section 126.107(g) of the Ordinance Code which stipulates that “supplies or services to be provided by those specifically prescribed within authorizing legislation that appropriates the same” can be exempted from competitive bidding. You would think after the uproar over the no bid Trail Ridge contract to Waste Management that competitive bidding would be the way to go.  But apparently the City Council thinks that the amount is low enough that no one will notice. As you can see, Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County has noticed!

This is also touted as an emergency expenditure. Emergency?! Unless this structure is about to collapse and take out a busload of nuns, this is hardly an emergency!

I do not see how this repairing this structure could be considered a valid government function. If anything, it is a waste of taxpayer money!

As Councilman Stephen Joost pointed out at a recent Finance Committee meeting, the number of people attending performances by the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra for the past budget year was 110,000+.  If one more dollar had been charged per ticket, there would be no need to burden the Jacksonville taxpayer with this bill.

The second one is bill 2008-1055.  This bill sets a graduated point system for evaluating the proximity of businesses seeking city government professional service contracts to Jacksonville.  The pecking order for favoring contract candidates is businesses that have headquarters in Jacksonville followed by businesses with branch offices in Jacksonville followed by business with branch office elsewhere in Florida followed by business with no offices in Florida. So isn’t favoring local businesses who pay local taxes a good idea?

Not necessarily.  By favoring local companies, the city may be limiting its pool of applicants since companies without a strong local presence may be less motivated to apply for local government contracts when they feel that the deck is stacked against them.  As any economist will tell you, limiting supply will invariably increase prices.  Even if we get more taxes from local businesses, we may pay out more in professional service fees due to a more limited supply of contract applicants.  Also, the city may be missing out on national companies that have greater resources and better economies of scale than local companies.

The bill also could favor companies with larger staffs.  This is due to an evaluation criterion expressed as “dividing the contract values from the City of Jacksonville over the last three years by the number of Jacksonville-based staff within the firm’s local offices” (bill text).  The lower the calculated number, the better for the company seeking the contract.  However, this number is likelier to be lower for companies with large local staff than for companies with smaller local staff even if all of the firms get the same dollar amount of contracts over the last three years.  While the stated purpose of this criterion is to ensure “an equitable distribution of contracts among qualified firms” (bill text), it could have the effect of limiting smaller firms’ access to contracts with the city.

If you agree with this analysis of these bills, write your City Council representative (see http://www.coj.net/City+Council/City+Council+members.htm for more information) and/or speak out against these bills at next Tuesday’s City Council meeting.  Only by participating in democracy can we have any influence on what Jacksonville city government does.