Dollars and Sense

Last week witnessed two radically different approaches to budgeting for the coming year and two voices that taxpayers can only hope will be heard consistently during the budget process to come for local taxing authorities.

During a meeting last week the Gulf County School Board approved for advertisement a budget that will likely reduce the tax load for owners of property that fell or remained unchanged in value.

Granted, much of the budget for public schools is set by the Florida Legislature and Department of Education so School Board members deserve as only as much credit as they should blame when the state raises taxing rates at the local level.

In the world of local control in government, local control is a largely absent ingredient for making school budgets.

However, School Board members should be credited for holding the line on spending for building projects, or capital outlay funding, and for not choosing to levy a quarter mill in operating dollars made available by the state through a majority vote of the board.

Even the one mill operating levy approved by voters over a year ago dropped in value, the board had remedies to replace those funds and resisted.

Meanwhile, last Tuesday, the Port St. Joe city commission approved by a 4-1 vote to submit a two mill increase to the Property Appraiser’s Office in order to provide “flexibility” in the coming weeks as commissioners craft a budget that lost roughly $450,000, equal roughly to a quarter mill, through a fall in property values.

The strategy is not without foundation.

Each taxing authority must by Aug. 4 submit to the Property Appraiser a proposed millage rate.

That millage rate will appear on Truth in Millage (TRIM) notices but is often not the final millage rate adopted when taxing authorities approve a final budget in the fall.

However, once the proposed millage rate is submitted into the governmental food chain, it can not go up.

It represents the ceiling, though taxing authorities can lower the millage rate in the course of crafting a final budget.

So there is a rationale in providing as much wiggle room as possible in what will almost certainly be one of the most challenging budgeting years the city of Port St. Joe, county, city of Wewahitchka or School Board have faced in some time.

And this year is likely just practice for next year.

At the same time it is often said that politics is perception so raising the millage rate two mills off the bat is a slippery strategy with already suffering taxpayers.

They have already seen water and sewer rates spike and are faced with the prospect of losing or being forced to pay for some services previously taken for granted as an act of faith from government.

Therefore it was with some reassurance that School Board members and city commissioners sounded as if they got it last week.

School Board members expressed understanding of the difficult fiscal year ahead but expressed relief that coming budget hearings would involve a discussion of the budget and not a tax increase.

As was said in several ways, the silver lining of dropping property values was that the state and School Board were able to set the outlines of a budget that included a significant drop in spending and placed no additional burden on taxpayers.

The words to shout about, though, came two nights earlier during the Port St. Joe city commission meeting.

Not only did Commissioner Greg Johnson refuse to support the two mill increase, despite any strategy, he also signaled that getting his vote on any tax increase was going to be a dogfight.

Commissioner Rex Buzzett went along with the two mill increase but made it clear that unless he believed commissioners had cut all they could from the budget he also would not support a tax increase of any kind.

Taxpayers can only hope that all taxing authorities approach the job ahead with the same frame of mind.

Particularly the county, whose taxes are typically – until the voter approved school levy last year – the biggest line on the TRIM notice.

From 2000-2005 taxpayers were slammed with double-digit tax increases by a county commission that believed raking in every chip on the table without really thinking about what lay ahead was the right approach.

The county has now slammed headfirst into what lay ahead. For several years commissioners have put on a good show of cutting their budget.

But the line item budgeting of, to tick off just a few small-change examples – travel, advertising and litigation – and the shifting of funds when budget lines are blasted away raise questions about how close to the bone commissioners are willing to slice.

And just how much of that 148 percent increase in taxes over that five year period at the dawn of the millennium taxpayers will ever get back.

A solution is a good dose of the common sense on display last week.