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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Two years ago, the Peyton administration and Jacksonville City Council decided that we Duval County taxpayers did not deserve the property tax relief promised to us by the Florida Legislature and imposed three new taxes on us. Now, the stormwater and garbage tax bill has hit us for the second time. This bill is twice as large as the last one.

Please join us in our effort to repeal these new taxes before it is too late.

On June 9th at 4 PM, let’s gather outside of City Hall prior to the City Council meeting and call for the repeal of these taxes!

Once the City Council meeting starts, you can tell City Council that the fees need to go during the public comment portion of the meeting. We need as many people to show up as possible. If we do not stop this tax now, it will become more difficult to remove in the future and will become a burden for generations to come in Jacksonville!

We seek nothing less than the immediate and permanent repeal of the ordinances authorizing the new fees:

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The following letter to the editor written by Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County board member Victor Wilhelm was printed in Sunday’s Florida Times Union.

Wrong direction

Shame on state Rep. Mike Weinstein for supporting a bill that allows a supermajority of the City Council to pass a sales tax increase without a vote of the people.

This usurps the home rule of families and their community. The intent of only allowing a sales tax increase by referendum for consolidated governments is to protect the outlying communities from the excesses of the urban core. This preserved home rule for communities like Mandarin or Baldwin.

Now 13 people on City Council can decide on the merits of a sales tax increase when it previously required the consent of a majority of the entire county.

Residents in Duval County are quite capable of deciding what services we wish to pay for. Duval County residents voted for over a $2 billion tax increase for the Better Jacksonville Plan.

Political power with respect to the relationship of individuals to government is a zero sum game. By changing the law to allow 13 people on City Council to decide versus over 700,000 individuals, Weinstein has shifted the balance of power in the wrong direction.

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I was fortunate enough to attend the Tallahassee press conference at which the successor to the Taxpayer Protection Amendment, “Your Dollar, Your Decision”, was unveiled. This proposed constitutional amendment will require that local governments get voter approval if they want to increase government spending faster than the combination of inflation and population growth. This basically says that local politicians cannot expand government past its current level of services (the idealistic view) or its gifts to special interest groups (the cynical and more realistic view) without explaining to the taxpayer why they need more money. This is like the son who runs through his weekly allowance in one day and then asks for more money from his father for the rest of the week. The father rightly would ask what his son did with the allowance already provided to him before giving his son more money.

This amendment is expected to be placed on the 2010 Florida ballot. To make this happen, it will need everyone’s support to get the signatures needed to get it on the ballot. To learn more about “Your Dollar, Your Decision”, check out the following links to web sites and videos that explain what it is about and why you should support it.

National Federation of Independent Business website about “Your Dollar, Your Decision”

Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County member Kimberly Abelon spoke in support of “Your Dollar, Your Decision” at the Tallahassee news conference

National Federation of Independent Business video on “Your Dollar, Your Decision”

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