Resident questions raising of tax rates
To the editor:
Our estimable Town Council has done it again, or is fixing to.
In the midst of a deep recession that has cost hard-working Americans so many jobs and caused others to be underemployed, seen retirement savings disappear, home values plummet, and created anxiety among all U.S. taxpayers, including many who reside on our fair island, the Fort Myers Beach Town Council has decided to raise our property tax rates. They did the same last year and I expect they will do the same next year, regardless of the economy and the financial status of their constituents.
There are so many opportunities for Council to reduce spending or, (I should wash my mouth with soap) raise revenues with more equitable taxation, but they choose to place the burden on those that share most of the tax burden, the good old middle class Fort Myers Beach taxpayer. Our Mayor rightfully questions the shenanigans surrounding the Mound House and Newton projects but can’t find the words to say “enough”-no more expenditures (at least until the staff provides some evidence that there is an end game with these money machines). The beach re-nourishment project is clearly on life support and will not go forward. Town Council knows that but won’t admit the obvious. Thus, $1 million languishes in limbo while our taxes are raised once again. There are many areas where Council can cut the expense budget. I suggested many last year but Council doesn’t want to hear proposals to reduce spending. They only look for arguments to support increases, thus their reliance on arcane notions of “roll-back” and “roll-forward”.
They did ask town staff to find reductions. That produced $136,000. It could just have easily produced five or ten times that amount but they were asking the wrong people. Staff has zero incentive to find significant reductions. Their objective is not to find savings so that taxes can be reduced; the only time staff normally will find savings is to support a large increase elsewhere. Finding savings in our annual budget is a job for leaders, that is, a job for Town Council. They are the ones with the political clout, the necessary will and mandate; it isn’t fair for staff to be saddled with that task. But there are no leaders on this Council, only spenders or spending followers.
The real surprise in this situation, at least to me, is the failure of the local press, both of whom I deeply respect, to report the almost dead certainty that Town Council is going to raise our taxes again. Both stories on the Fort Myers Beach budget deliberations in last week’s editions of the Observer and Sand Paper omitted the fact that Council is planning to raise our ad velorum tax rates from .7091 mills to a maximum of .8670 mills (over +20 percent). The arithmetic is obvious but the politics is onerous. It’s almost as if the politicians wrote these articles. Your readers and town taxpayers deserve the facts, not the nonsense about “roll-back” and “roll-forward”. Perhaps all that ridiculous posturing over the Town Manager’s wife’s professional activities clouded everyone’s judgment.
Ed Lombard
Fort Myers Beach