Since we received our proposed property tax bill yesterday, I was wondering about the special assessments that Lake Worth wants to impose that have not yet been reflected. How does that work? The Special Meeting to vote on these taxes is next month. We are always just a wee bit behind the world it seems and our world is in the hands of our city manager who controls the Commission.
Even though Scott Maxwell voted against the fire/rescue special assessment, he did not reject the principle behind the special assessment or why it is unfair. No one on the dais understood it; they only recited the company line.
I am not against paying $60. The amount of money regarding this particular assessment is not my complaint. What is my complaint is that down the road, the city manager will be allowed to throw anything she chooses relative to fire/rescue onto the non-advalorem portion of our tax bill. The Commission allowed her to do this. They allowed her the ability to special assess costs relative to fire to be open-ended.
If the County says "no" to Stanton's demand of dropping the supplement payment of $900,000 this year and $1.3 million for every year after 2012, she will now be able to assess that as well. At that point, and as every assessment is thrown onto our bill for anything (the possibilities are endless as long as it is lawful), the regressive tax becomes very serious for the poor as we will be paying disproportionately. Also, any special assessment circumvents the 10 mil cap law. Why the City Commission refuses to see these very obvious facts is disturbing and it is one that I need to evaluate as the election approaches.
The Commission should stop all unnecessary spending immediately--no raises...no nothing and especially NO FREE LUNCH. How much are our cell phone bills as an example? Everyone should be conscientious about everything. They are not.
Gary R. Nikolits, Property Appraiser says:
Palm Beach County has mailed 654,522 Proposed Notices to all property owners in the county. Notices will be in mailboxes starting Tuesday, August 23. Property owners who disagree with the proposed amount of their property taxes can voice their objections at public hearings held in September by their respective taxing authorities. The dates and times are listed on the Notice. “My office receives thousands of calls each year from property owners to complain about their property taxes, but my office cannot help them with taxation issues,” said Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits. “However, if the property owner has a problem with our January 1 estimate of market value or was denied an exemption or classification, they should call my office for an explanation.” The Property Appraiser’s contact numbers are on the Notice. “If we are unable to resolve the matter, the property owner can file a petition with the Value Adjustment Board,” Nikolits added. The VAB petition-filing period begins Tuesday, Aug. 23 and ends Friday, Sept. 16.
9 comments:
What a mess how depressing to see all of this coming from our esteemed city manager, maybe it is time she is asked to leave. Is she willing to make any sacrifices herself, to take a pay cut like many have to elsewhere? She is a control freak and power grabber. She will be the fate of her own demise as she is not listening to the citizens. She is arrogant and obnoxious, she could care less about all of us "people," money breeds corruption and she has shown she is right in their with it. WE need to make sure that the leaders and CM know we are disgusted with them, vote them all out! We now need fresh eyes and brains who can really problem solve without so much waste.
The problems that we have are many, not just on a personal, city, state, nation but global; we are on the door step ( and have been for quit sometime now) of the next global depression which will not be nice to us because we have the highest standard of living and there is no where to go but down.
Depression means to deflate, to devalue, so if you follow the stock market you see that the market has dropped considerably and then it goes back up but, what most people don't see is that the values have deflated or are lost all together. So now shares that sold in the past at $60.00 or more are only worth $5.70, so the dividend ( if any are paid ) will shrink which means less tax money coming into the system. We are in a deflationary period that could last decades just like what has happen in Japan for the last 2 decades.
On top of the fact that technology (Death By Technology is the book) is making labor ( jobs ) redundant, factories that used to need 450 employees now only need 50 employees, the large corporations have usurp all the power and so most small business do not have a chance to compete which means they have to down size or go out of business all together. Even if big corporations come into the city they get big tax and utility breaks and big deals that they bring 50 $10.00 an hour jobs, it's not enough.This all leads to the gap between the rich and the poor becoming wider which mean that your tax base will shrink, going forward unemployment will get higher (real unemployment in the US is around 20% now). On top of the fact that the largest ever percentage of people world wide are coming into retirement which will cause big problems not just for us.
Out of control government (local or national) is just a reflection of We The People, we the people are out of control, bankrupted governments are a reflection of we the people, we the people are bankrupted and so we are trying to fix our financial problems by doing the exact same thing that got us in this trouble to begin with,which is borrow ( TAX ) and spend to get us moving again. Borrow and spend and grow the government was the creation of FDR (the New Deal) which never worked (The Forgotten Man, is the book) has gotten us to this point, we were Inflating/consuming then because we were the top exporter of most everything including oil; we are lying to ourselves and have been riding our own shirt tails since the 1970's--we are broke .
The city has been running a smash and crab operation all along with its code enforcement, praying on its residents and small and large businesses to the point of running people out of town, indiscriminately of race and color I might add--taken prosperity from resident and business and tied up big money in them and now these properties are just sitting there not generating any tax income what so ever. So at a time when they should be lowing taxes and attracting people back into this town, they are trampling over the resident and business that are left here to make ends meet with higher taxes that we don't have.
Our system of government at every level does not work anymore. We the people have an entitlement mind set that the government has to do things for us and do not realize that government can't give us anything unless they take it from us first. We are spending the most money on services of police and fire on the same people ( the poor and the elderly ) that are paying the least into the system. In the elderly case, like my own parents, the money that they paid into the retirement system was used up in the first 4 or 5 years due to cost increase of everything (inflation). Another way of looking at it is,my parents started paying into the system when fuel was .19 cents a gal. up through when fuel was $1.50 a gal. and now we have to give them service at $4.00 a gal. and the economy is shrinking. We have a problem that has to be addressed and not sweep under the carpet-- we have to look hard in the mirror and it's ugly.
The private sector has taken a hard loss/cut/haircut/ at ever step and the public sector should not be any different, for the most part the public sector has cut at the bottom, the guys doing the grunt work, garbage, mowing, etc., the guys we need the most and not much at the top. If you travel around the country you will find that fire/rescue is for the most part a volunteer service. We need to consolidate the fire/police, lay off one or the other and who ever stays does both fire and police for the same pay and lower taxes so that we can help those that get laid off flow into the private sector which will not be easy, it will be very hard.
AT this time we need people in government that can bring people together with the truth and it's not happening here in the City of Lake Worth. We have a city government that can't manage the city or steer it in the best possible direction. You can see it in the One Consciousness that we are, Dixie corridor is a disaster with empty buildings everywhere, Sewell hardware which was a land mark closed, downtown is dead, the locals can't carry the town anymore and the tourists season is shorter and shorter.We keep voting different people into office and they are all following the same script, nothing good has happen here in a long time.
The real American , the Algonquin, Cesar Figueroa
Lynn, to follow up on "The many faces of the CM" which was posted earlier, the more I think about it, the stronger I'm convinced that my formerly acute, now Chronic Optical Rectalitis (where the optical nerve is connected to the rectum so that you perceive a s****y outlook on life) is caused by the failure of our elected officials to stand up to the tyrany of the appointed one, namely Susan (GSG's favorite) Stanton. To allow any one, non elected person to impose their will over the good of all the people means that the whole dais (Cmsr Maxwell excluded) should be the subject of close scrutiny come November. We Americans won our independence over "no taxation without representation." Let's look forward to a new day in Lake Worth.
I said that Commissioner Maxwell is NOT excluded and I believe that 100%. So although I disagree with you on that statement that he is excluded, the rest of your commentary is just WOW!.
"Let the camel get it's nose under the tent - for sure the whole camel's coming in"
How Much is a VAB Petition Cost to file?
Didn't they raise that fee too?
Sounds like another "Revenue Generator"
Can we join together and file ONE petition - everyone knows Lake Worth's values are down.
The Emperor's Have No Clothes on - time to say so! Tell everyone that will listen to get to these meetings.
Another really great commentary from all and very educational as well. These are dark times for everyone and those with cash flow I hope your watching it closely even you are at risk.
Yes there is financial burden globally but right now WE need to focus on Lake Worth! As sad as everything sounds "We the People" have got to force change.
One, Get your own house in order, find where you can save and start banking (saving) for a darker day.
Two, Let your commissioners know that their actions are not the will of the people and they are taxing us out of our businesses and homes while City Staff keeps wasting money and bleeding funds from every department.
Three, Learn everything you can about the new "blood" that is joining the election races and make sure they are what they seem...as we do not need to repeat the same performance - song and dance that we are suffering from right now.
The city needs to be apply for every county, state and federal funding it can get for anything and everything that will help on our financial burdens because frankly every other municipality is applying and getting these funds....I know that we have been seeking out funding but are we applying and do we still have a grant writer on staff?
We do have a grant writer on staff who is too busy to apply for new grants, having a tough time keeping up with the old ones. Screwy, huh?
Current grant writer is leaving as of August 31st. They are looking at resumes.
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