No matter how you want to slice the cake, there will always be people lining up for a piece of the pie. In this pie case involving Lake Worth politicians, they will be able to add it to their EPITAPH, "We threw a pie in your face by fixing a broken city and got you into the biggest debt in its history."
Today's editorial in the Palm Beach Post slants its opinion toward the voter who will reach deep into his pockets for the greater good of the city. The city sent the editorial board a great PR to use to construct its editorial? It is really asking voters to sacrifice for a city that is in desperate need of help and blames all of its problems on being old, or indirectly on past commissions not taking care of business. We have already spent more than we have received in revenues for 2014. I think they learned this trick from the federal government. How do you get revenue? Well, we can't print money like the Feds so we choke people to death with taxes and we do it all at once!
Although the editorial board says that our city can't afford to wait on fixing our infrastructure, they do acknowledge that we are "mired in poverty." The article touches on the general obligation bond for $60 million but doesn't mention the revenue bond for another $14 million that everyone in this city will be paying for to replace water pipes in a few areas of our city. It doesn't mention the increase in water rates (another tax for this 2020 vision possibly up to 16%) that everyone will be paying for in this poverty stricken city. It also doesn't mention the debt we already have on the books or the cash we have moved around on the books:
$56.7 on the utility upgrade…money still unaccounted for in the original bond
$3.5 million still owed on the Gateways...
$87 million or so in unfunded pension liability
NOTHING is ever mentioned about the cost of public safety or the pensions that have bled this city dry which are uncontrollable costs amounting to 69.31% of the entire budget.
So, not only will taxes go up $3.33 per $1,000 of value, taxes will go up across the board in one way shape or form for everyone. This mean that the majority of poor people living in their homes, struggling to get by, will be taxed to the max, plus in every way the city can get think of.
Will this drive people out? Will they be able to even sell their houses? Will people want to buy into the highest tax city in Palm Beach County? Will this drive away business that will be taxed to the max? Will this actually discourage business that will have to pay on a general obligation bond for 30 years--a humongous amount? We will find out if or when this gets on the ballot, possibly on the August primary. Few will be here to voice an opinion--just the folks who believe that they are elevated in spirit and character and convinced by this dais, willing to pay for the biggest part of the 30 year general obligation bond to reconstruct one-half of the city.
22 comments:
Hopefully hopefully hopefully hopefully all the losers that don't want to see Lake Worth cleaned up will move and then new residents that can actually afford to pay property taxes will move in. We have too many losers in town that want to keep their taxes low or pay nothing at all while the city crumbles. Time to ante up or move out. The days of Lake Worth being run by a group of people advocating living in a ghetto are over.
LOL--you sure are being hoodwinked, aren't ya? No one wants to live in a ghetto. Get busy cleaning up the slum, blight and the crime and maybe, just maybe, someone will want to move here. In the meantime, you build more and more affordable rental housing that breeds more of the same.
Grabbing $60 plus another $14 million is not going to clean up the ghetto.
The only losers are you who live on pipe dreams and grabbing other people's money.
I hope it passes and you get stuck with a huge tax bill or are you a renter with the big mouth?
Once city hall explains where all the missing millions have gone since 2005, then they can have ,maybe, some of my money. What happened to the plan under Manager Boyer that would have done the job street by street in an affordable manner?
Basically, city hall is a den of thieves. Remember Joe Kroll telling our Commissioners that a job in Bryant park would cist 258,000 dollars ?It was done by the city manager Stanton for 20,000. If these jerks want 68,000, 40,000 will go into various pockets around the city. Enough said.
To the wise old owl anonymous above, how come you are so deficient? Why spout the same old lies over and over again. Hope you get creamed with new taxes. I don't live here and I say thanks every day for that. Suffer. Move to Greenacres where we do things better and we don't have losers running our government or loser police.
Anony at 2:54. Did you come from another planet. One of those guys who continually lies through his teeth blaming all our problems on a handful of anarchists. What a dunce. It's laughable. Using the word dunce is appropriate here. You are so way off base that you personally deserve high taxes. Stay on your own crazy blog and stop approving more affordable rentals to attract *&^%$#. Please print.
So doing the math, a property owner with a taxable value of $100,000 would pay an extra $15.00 per month for the first two years, for just this bond. This is in addition to all other taxes and assessments we receive on our tax bill.
That amount would increase to approximately $21.00 per month in years 3 & 4 and then to $27 per month after that.
If these figures are correct, you can do the multiplication to see where your MONTHLY tax increase will be.
How will homesteaded properties affect the above figures? Is bonded debt payable by everyone?
So let's see.... we all know that the work needs to be done. If you read this blog regularly, you read Lynn constantly saying that we should clean up the slum and blight. Now comes the time to put our money where her mouth is.
What are we to do? Since she is opposed to it, what does she offer and how would we pay for THAT?
I don't have a huge amount of trust in ANY government entity either with that kind of money, but we need to do something or we are more toast than we are now.
We are taking it at face value that "all this work needs to be done."
I am shocked at the amount you are asking people to pay...I am not opposed to replacing infrastructure where absolutely necessary.
You are talking about the monthly increase ONLY on the general obligation bond that could go as high as $45 a month in year 5 of your scenario or another $545 a year in taxes--but totally ignoring all the rest of the tax you are imposing on people here. How come? Does a revenue bond not count? Do outrageous water bills not count? On one had you are reducing the electric rate to fool people and then raising everything else.
Repair the worst first. it is up to you to come up with a workable plan that the people will approve. How can the 2nd poorest city in the county handle all of this debt? Once it is on the backs of the people, we will be THE poorest city in the county, bar none.
I agree that we do need to invest in our infrastructure. I agree that doing the whole project at once is probably not the way to go. Better to split the project in to smaller parts and ask the tax payers to pay x for part a, pay y for part b, etc. A huge project like this is ripe for fraud, abuse and waste as we have seen before.
I also agree that the question of who is going to pay and how is important. The same people pay for things over and over and over again. Every property owner in the city needs to pay for roads not just some, not just snowbirds and not just businesses.
Just do streets, curbs, sidewalks, drainage and pipes. Eliminate all frills. The commission could vote in without any vote of the people an assessment where every household is charged equally to pay for it .
Why do you believe that an assessment with every property owner charged the same is fair? Do you really believe that an owner of a house worth $500,000 should pay the same as someone with a house worth $50,000?
Ok--what about a charge of 1% per annum on the assessed value of the property?
What would that raise a year over 30 years?
Seems to me the homes valued the least are in areas that need the most infrastructure renovation. Fair to me that for getting the most work done your tradeoff is paying an equal share. This has been accomplished in many cities. I am not sure this commission has the backbone to do what is right.
Again, there is nothing fair about paying the same. Now, infrastructure is all over the city, anonymous. it is not necessarily in the areas of the lower valued homes. It is College park that needs the new pipes as an example.
That is why ad valorem tax is based on property value--it is the fairest way to tax.
We here, directly on Lake Osborne Drive, live on a county road and our streets within our community are all privately owned.
I do not have all the data but a 60thou. home would pay 6hun. 600x 10thou. properties is 6mil.
There is no system where everyone will be happy. If you look at the cities plan the majority of road building is in less valued areas. You will see that to keep taxes down assessing is becoming popular.
The majority of the city have low values. I don't mind assessing but it has to be fair...a percentage of assessed value perhaps?
one percent is too much-- one-quarter percent even better but 30 years? Holy cow.
Lake Worth management and Commission is like that 800 pound guy stuck in his apartment, too fat to get out of bed anymore. We've enabled these pigs to stuff themselves at our expense for far too long.We need to stop enabling these people to be so out of control, and just plain wasteful with our money. These delusional divas want us to hand over more than 60 million dollars to them when they can't even return our phone calls and e-mails ? NO Way !
@10:14, I realize your post is a lot of ranting.since there really is no money to stuff themselves with. We should not give the city 60mil at once in a bond. We should assess everyone equally by the month. If we do not like how it is going we can always pull the plug and also vote them out.
@10:14, I realize your post is a lot of ranting.since there really is no money to stuff themselves with.
11:10, we don't know if there is or is not any money in the city. That's the problem. NO ONE knows what is going on financially in Lake Worth. For years we have been trying to get some accounting, especially with the utility, but anyone who begins to get close to the truth is fired and replaced by a "company " yes man.This city is a black hole of corruption, and heck no, they can't have one more penny of my money than they already suck out of me.
Good Point!
"These delusional divas want us to hand over more than 60 million dollars to them when they can't even return our phone calls and e-mails? NO Way!"
We get a Pre-Determined Survey and a plan from staff that is so grandiose they should all be spanked for even suggesting it!
Unfortunately, staff might enjoy being spanked.
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