Thursday, September 1, 2011

City of Lake Worth Plays Hardball

Comment Up
Who from Staff wrote this?
It is important to remember that the assessment process is the most equitable way for making sure that our Fire Fighters are rewarded for their service to the community and for their dedication and willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice 24 hours a day ....7 days a week.
Big Barf!

What a crock!! According to the City Manager's Report, we have 11,431 residences that will be affected by her special assessment: 8,829 homes will pay more and 2,602 will pay less so that she can make $72,020 more in revenue by doing it this way rather than leaving it on the advalorem portion of the tax bill. This is a bad tax all across the board. On page 30 of the Budget it says that we have 16,473 housing units with 3,515 vacant which leaves 12,958 housing units with 1,261 for rent. There is a difference here in the number of units from 16,473 to 11,431 of 5,042. So what does this number represent? Houses owned by the government as well as foreclosed homes owned by banks that refuse to pay anyone anything?

Today the City published its first Notice of Public Hearing on the fire special assessment scheduled for September 22 at 6pm at City Hall. The City will be raising $1,450,856. It says that we all will get a separate bill from the City that will be mailed this November and if we do not pay it, they will play hardball: Possible foreclosure--initiate collection proceedings to compel payment by any means allowed by law that would cause a tax certificate to be issued against the property which may result in a loss of title.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tell the city to dissolve its charter and take a hike!!! If these people were in County Government I wander how many of them would be serving jail time like other County Officials and Politicians.

Danny said...

Is the goal of the city manager to chase off all the homeowners in this city so none of us want to live here anymore? It sure seems like it. With these economic times, you would think they would want to help us, not make us want to sell and move out of Lake Worth. Just because the CM doesn't own property and has no idea what it is like to pay all these taxes.

Anonymous said...

I blame this all on the city commission, every single one of them--no exception.

Anonymous said...

Agreed on all three posts above....

Anonymous said...

Interesting that the fire pension assessment is going to be a separate bill. I wonder how many will miss paying it. First if you have a mortgage, most likely your bank requires you to escrow for taxes (I don't b/c I'd rather not give my back an interest free loan, but most do) so many will not know what to do with a tax bill that they receive. Probably quite a few will think their bank is paying this bill.

Second, the City is going to start forclosing to collect its $60 pension padding? Well that seems very logical, let's make the foreclosure system worse than it already is, let's issue fines for this pension padding.

Come on, this is the most ridiculous plan ever.

We just got two bills related to our rental, some fee that the city makes up separate and apart from the rental license, who knows what it is for because THERE IS NO DESCRIPTION ON IT WHATSOEVER except it says first notice and it references our rental license number for each property. I have no idea what this bill is for, I'll end up paying it b/c what choice do I have, but I expect these fire assessment bills to be similar void of any information.