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Safety Harbor Waterfront Park and Marina Credit: Clearwater Drone Guy \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\nSafety Harbor Waterfront Park and Marina Credit: Clearwater Drone Guy \/ Shutterstock<\/p>\n
For the past 25 years, my wife and I have lived in the city of Safety Harbor, a quaint, yet vibrant, city that we share with 16,000 or so others on Old Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n
Safety Harbor is full of generous people and businesses who support all of the nonprofit work we do, and has provided us with a quality of life unmatched by anywhere else either of us have ever lived. The challenging economy we all are trying our best to navigate now means we can\u2019t give back as much as we\u2019d like, at least financially, so almost anything that would help make our lives more affordable would be a welcome relief to us.<\/p>\n
Except one: Amendment 3.<\/p>\n
The property tax issue Florida voters are being asked to consider on their Nov. 3 ballot is nothing more than a mirage. We\u2019re being told that it is real help for our wallets and pocketbooks, but when you reach for it, you realize that the sand sifting through your fingers is, at best, a tax shift and, at worst, a dagger straight through the heart of almost everything that makes Safety Harbor the paradise we adore.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve read your city\u2019s proposed budget, attended your city\u2019s recent public meetings, or talked with your locally elected officials, you\u2019ve no doubt got an early peek at how different your city will look under Amendment 3. For those of us in Safety Harbor, possible future changes include the elimination of jobs, the end of publications and programs that keep residents informed and engaged, and reducing open hours and programs offered at our library, recreational centers and parks. Also, a needed replacement of the aging lighting system at City Park that provides night-time use of baseball fields for hundreds of Safety Harbor Little Leaguers, tournament teams and rec leagues has been put off pending the results of the Nov. 3 vote.<\/p>\n
And those are just the things being talked about before the November vote. I fully expect more if Amendment 3 passes, and much, much more five years from now when the most painful bite of the amendment takes effect.<\/p>\n
Even though these services collectively help decide how valuable your home is to a potential buyer, I know that, for some voters, none of that matters. If you don\u2019t use the library, you probably don\u2019t care whether it\u2019s open five days a week or seven. If you don\u2019t use your parks, you probably don\u2019t care how high the weeds get or whether kids can see a baseball after dusk.<\/p>\n
But what we all should care about is the actual math of Amendment 3\u2014how much money is actually staying in your wallet if Amendment 3 passes. In the rush to get this issue on the ballot, our state lawmakers didn\u2019t realize, or didn\u2019t much care, that local officials still have tremendous power to raise money in other ways.<\/p>\n
In Safety Harbor, our Commissioners:<\/p>\n
Voted this month to raise the millage rate for the first in many years\u2014from 3.95 mills to 4.1435 mills. That change only costs my household about $90 or so, but for my neighbors who own non-homesteaded or recently homesteaded properties, that cost will be much, much higher and cut into any savings they realize if Amendment 3 passes.<\/p>\n
Recently received, as many cities have, a presentation on possibly adding a special fire assessment fee to ensure that vital city service is unaffected. Local governments retain the power to assess these fees on certain services, including solid waste, stormwater, roads, utilities and street lights. And here\u2019s the real kicker to these additional fees\u2014your homestead exemption doesn\u2019t apply to them!\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve had one friend tell me his local officials are a bunch of drunken sailors, wasting money left and right, and Amendment 3 will rein them in. It won\u2019t. If they truly are drunken sailors wasting your money, they\u2019ll just find new ways to \u201cwaste\u201d your money. The fix for that isn\u2019t Amendment 3. The fix for that is for you to vote them out.<\/p>\n
A \u201cno\u201d vote doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t want\u2014or need\u2014to save money. Whomever wins the Governor\u2019s Mansion in November will appoint the Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission next spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My hope is that the citizens appointed to that crucially important work take it more seriously than the state Legislature did over just a couple of days this summer, and present to all of us a more comprehensive plan for tax changes that doesn\u2019t gut the very reasons that you and your family believe make Safety Harbor\u2014or wherever you call home\u2014the paradise that it is.<\/p>\n
Scott Long is former Safety Harbor City Commissioner, who has served on several city advisory boards and on the boards of Safety Harbor non-profit organizations.<\/p>\n
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