A property tax referendum this fall, and the lanyard class

This week, the Florida legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis came together to put a property tax referendum before voters. The November referendum will ultimately increase the Homestead exemption from $50,000 to $250,000, in phases, and puts caps on assessment increases for non-homestead and commercial properties. The amendment specifies that property tax revenue may still be used for public safety, including law enforcement, fire service and emergency medical service. It will need a 60 percent yes vote to be approved.

In the run-up and this week, local governments were unsuccessfully trying to make the point that cuts will hurt government services. There is something to that point. When government stops getting money it needs, it finds another. A letter from Lee County called it “one of the most significant restructurings of local government finance in Florida’s history.” Local governments, including Charlotte County, have been issuing social media posts with concerns, and North Port sent emails. We hope they don’t spend too much staff time trying to defeat the referendum. What may be a better thing for local governments to do is to look deeply at expenses, and figure out cheaper methods in case this passes.

This fall, it will be interesting to see how millage rates are set by Lee and Charlotte counties. Most Florida counties rode the assessment boom of the mid-2000s, only to sharply cut budgets after the real estate crash in 2008. During the recent COVID boom, local governments often pointed to declining millage rates as evidence of fiscal restraint. Yet rapidly rising property values meant that tax collections continued to increase. The result was larger budgets even as officials claimed tax rates were falling.

We tend to focus on Lee County, but this week’s spending discussion turns to Charlotte County. Many readers of our paper may follow the Englewood broker and real estate agent Brian Faro, who posts regularly on social media about local development. He referenced Charlotte County’s recent landscaping of Gasparilla Road around South Gulf Cove in a discussion over a non-homesteaded property’s tax bill, which has almost doubled in the last decade. The Gasparilla Road landscaping is an expense that did not have to happen in the $700,000 grand way that it was done, with an astonishing variety of plants that would be better suited for pedestrians walking the GICIA Bike Path. The simpler government solution would have been to plant a row of native cocoa plum-type bushes that would have shielded the two directions of cars from each other. It would have provided habitat and food for wildlife. County workers could have cut the hedge every couple of years or so, and because they are native plants, it would not require irrigation or any sort of fertilizer or Roundup.

Charlotte County has heard from voters on a number of spending issues, and responded. Charlotte County said no to a $1.4 million sidewalk proposed near the Lemon Bay Conservancy’s Wildflower Preserve. This came through the Placida Street and Drainage MSBU; the cost would have been tacked on to every homeowner in the district. Residents turned out to oppose it, though the county had already spent money on engineering. The issue about spending in any government is that taxing is about a power relationship. An average Cape Haze household has thousands of dollars less to spend each year than it did a decade ago. And there is more bureaucracy to deal with.

Last week, an Englishman named Frank Wright stirred up social media during a campaign interview for a local election. Wright, wearing a trilby hat, talked about the average person’s frustration with the government class. He reminded us of the change in the way we live in a later interview.

“We had a very different way of living, which didn’t have this administrative bureaucracy infused with this mad ideology that taxes us to death, to police us with this kind of awful commissariat lanyard class, for example.”

Extreme. But if any of us go back 50 years, most of us hardly ever encountered a government person, except for police and the DMV or city utility. To say this is not to argue for a libertarian state. But what is painfully obvious is that the “lanyard” class, empowered by a bureaucracy behind it, is rapidly turning both Lee and Charlotte counties into highly built-out places that we do not want. Take a read at any of the long consent agenda expense items at local meetings and you will wonder where this is all going. We are not Europe, but we are getting there.

Regarding the referendum, the voters will have their say. Howard Jarvis and the California tax proposition of 1978 delivered real tax relief to homeowners but it also complicated California’s public services. But people are frustrated, and the everyday Florida family, in an average-sized house, needs some relief.

Garland Pollard is editor of the Beacon. Email editor@bocabeacon.com