A RESOLUTION OF THE CONCERNED TAXPAYERS OF DUVAL COUNTY IN SUPPORT OF ELECTED POSITIONS FOR DUVAL COUNTY

Whereas, it has not been demonstrated that the appointment of representatives of the People by the mayor creates a more efficient or responsive municipal government versus their election.

Whereas, history has demonstrated that the consolidation of the People’s representatives into fewer executive, legislative and judicial offices erodes accountability and responsiveness of governments.

Whereas, residents in Duval County have not expressed a desire of the appointment of offices that are currently elected.

Now therefore:

Be it resolved that the Concerned Taxpayer of Duval County supports the continued election of City Council, School Board, Sheriff, Clerk of Court, Property Appraiser, Tax Collector and other offices as necessary.

A RESOLUTION OF THE CONCERNED TAXPAYERS OF DUVAL COUNTY IN SUPPORT INCLUDING AN ETHICS CODE INTO THE DUVAL COUNTY MUNICIPAL CHARTER

Whereas, the original municipal charter of the consolidated government of Duval County included a code of ethics.

Whereas, the ethics code was removed from the charter in 1972 and Duval County government has operated without an ethics code since that time.

Whereas, the residents of Duval County deserve an ethical government whose elected and appointed officials as well as employees behave in a manner that avoids impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.

Whereas, the legal framework only provides remedies for criminal acts and not unethical acts.

Whereas, the residents of Duval County deserve to have the agents of the Duval County government be accountable to a code of ethics.

Now therefore:

Be it resolved that the Concerned Taxpayer of Duval County supports the inclusion of an ethics code in the municipal charter of Duval County to be determined and enforced in an accountable and transparent fashion that does not burden the Taxpayer with increased bureaucracy.

A PROPOSED RESOLUTION FOR THE CTDC:

To the Honorable Members of the Florida House of Representatives and Florida Senate:

Whereas, Article I, Section 21 of the Florida Constitution guarantees to every person access to the courts for redress of any injury, and that justice shall be administered “without sale, denial or delay;” and

Whereas, under present law, dating back to an act of the Territorial Legislature of December 11, 1824, foreclosure of a mortgage in Florida requires the foreclosing party to file a lawsuit and establish to the satisfaction of an elected Florida judge both that the Plaintiff is the correct party to bring the action, and is entitled to the judicial sale of the encumbered real property for application of the proceeds against the original debt; and

Whereas this judicial foreclosure procedure permits the property owner to raise defenses concerning the validity of the debt, the foreclosure procedure, and the status of the Plaintiff as the correct party to maintain their case within the foreclosure suit itself, and without the need to file an independent legal action, or to incur the up to $1900 filing fee now required to file such an action; and

Whereas, recently litigated foreclosure cases in this state have revealed that in many instances that due to the recent discredited practice of securitization of mortgages the party claiming to own the note and mortgage being foreclosed upon is unable to establish, even by a preponderance of the evidence, either that they are in fact the owner or that they otherwise are entitled to initiate foreclosure proceedings, to such an extent that the Florida Supreme Court has announced that court-ordered mediation shall be required in all contested foreclosure cases; and

Whereas there is now pending for consideration in the upcoming Session of the Legislature a bill prepared by the Florida Bankers’ Association entitled the “Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act,” which, if enacted into law, would remove the requirement for judicial foreclosure of any mortgage entered into in the past or to be entered into in the future which contains language authorizing “non-judicial foreclosure,” and create a procedure by which foreclosure would take place without use of the courts unless the real property owner paid the requisite fees and filed a lawsuit challenging the non-judicail foreclosure; and

Whereas, in the case of existing mortgages, this proposed change of the law amounts to an after-the-fact reduction of the rights of the citizen who at present is afforded the protection of the courts by forcing the citizen to initiate a lawsuit, at enormous expense, simply in order to merely present defenses against threatened loss of property; and

Whereas, no mere claims by the financial services industry of the need to expediently deal with court backlogs justifies the reduction of the present rights of natural persons and real property owners in foreclosure cases; and

Whereas this proposed legislation is intended solely to benefit a class of litigants who, presented with a need to prove to a judge their right to relief and increasingly unable to do so, have chosen to seek to change the law rather than comply with it, it is

RESOLVED, that the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County, Inc., opposes the so-called  “Florida Consumer Protection and Homeowner Credit Rehabilitation Act,” and calls for the rejection of this proposed legislation, as well as the rejection of any other proposals for implementation of non-judicial mortgage foreclosure, or of any other limitation on the rights of individual Florida citizens either to the protection of the courts.

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Upcoming Budget Workshops

Thurs., 2/11/10 – 6-8 p.m.
CPAC District 2 Budget Workshop
Blue Cypress Community Center
4012 University Blvd. N.

Sat., 2/27/10 – 9:30-11:30 a.m.
CPAC District 4 Budget Workshop
Cecil Community Center
13531 Lake Newman Drive

Sat., 3/06/10 – 9:30-11:30 a.m.
CPAC District 1 Budget Workshop
Jacksonville Children’s Commission
1095 A. Philip Randolph Blvd.

Thurs., 3/25/10 – 6-8 p.m.
CPAC District 5 Budget Workshop
Clanzel T. Brown Community Center
4545 Moncrief Road

Sat., 4/17/10 – 9:30-11:30 a.m.
CPAC District 3 Budget Workshop
Balis Community Center
1513 LaSalle Street

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When you read the above excerpt from Mayor John Peyton’s speech, you get the sense that Peyton has a rather ambitious view of his role as Mayor.  Rather than running an efficient government that provides an essential but limited set of services to local taxpayers, Peyton instead want to be the savior of Jacksonville dispensing  job opportunities and improved quality of life to everyone like Santa Claus on Christmas day.  While this may seem noble to many, you have to question whether Peyton has the godlike powers to make this happen.  Cities are complex social organizations that defy top down control by politicians no matter how sincere or self confident they may be.  The reason that free markets work is that they do not presume that one person or even a committee of people have the knowledge and available tools to manage the complex web of personal and economic relationships that take place within Jacksonville.  Free markets rely on the decentralized decision making by entrepreneurs trying to discover what their customers need and then meeting that need before their competitors beat them to the punch.

Recently, the Jacksonville Charter Revision Commission proposed that the mayor develop a four year strategic plan that includes a “vision statement, mission statement, financial plan, goals and measurements for annual performance reviews”.   While strategic planning is important for any organization including city government, we need to be careful to identify what the goal of this foray into strategic planning should be and should not be.  It should not be a strategic plan for Jacksonville.  Instead, it should be a strategic plan for Jacksonville city government.  There is a difference.  The former assumes a godlike remolding of a city of 800,000+ people while the latter is more realistic in its desire to do just a few essential things and do them well.

A savior mentality seems to be inherent within the politician psyche.  Efficiently provide a limited set of services that the free market finds difficult to duplicate is way too mundane for politicians like Peyton.  It is more fun for Peyton to throw around taxpayer money in a vain attempt to transform Jacksonville into his vision of what he thinks that it should be regardless of whether Jacksonville residents want to go along for the ride.  My advice to Mayor Peyton is to get the city budget under control without another tax increase, reform the city pension system and leave the quality of life issue to the private sector which is more responsive to its customers than governments tend to be.

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A RESOLUTION OF THE CONCERNED TAXPAYERS OF DUVAL COUNTY IN OPPOSITION TO CITY COUNCIL BILL 2009-0940

Whereas City Council Bill 2009-0940 exempts the Gerdau Ameristeel steel plant located near Baldwin from paying the public service tax on electricity for five years; and

Whereas the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County supports low taxes but only when they are applied equally to all businesses and individuals subject to the tax; and

Whereas the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County opposes City Council legislation that is clearly tailored to providing a benefit to an individual business thereby ensuring city government a role in determining the winners and losers in the local economy;

Now therefore be it resolved that the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County opposes City Council Bill 2009-0940.

The resolution was read to City Council members at their January 12th meeting.

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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.

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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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I accept that some of the salary increase may have been due to new bachelors degrees which led to promotions or something similar to this.  Clearly, this could be a legitimate recognition of the improved skill set brought about through higher education. However, 586 employees out of 8,116 – about 7 percent of the city workforce – received raises of 10 percent or more. Clearly, this has to be explained before we taxpayers will accept a 12 percent tax increase

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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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