Let me begin by saying that I love living here. We have some of the world’s most beautiful beaches, our waters are mostly calm (with the exception of the occasional hurricane!), the climate is nice, and the people quite sociable.
But – as with all good things, there are storm clouds and various degrees of foolishness. In this case, our local and county governments are the guilty parties.
Over the last 10 years the population of this area has grown about 10%. That’s not a bad number, but its not “stunning” growth.
What has grown, however, is the property tax base.
Driven largely by “investment speculation”, condos have popped up everywhere. Developers have come in and razed small local businesses and homes, or in some cases, acquired the few remaining feet of available “clear” real estate and BOOM! – up pops another 30 story condo building.
This has fueled a tremendous rise in property values – 32% in the last year, and more than 100% over the last three, all-in. That, of course, has doubled the county and local city budgets, since their millage is tied directly to property value.
But wait a second – are they providing 100% more services – the same services to double the number of people? No.
Are they providing 80% more services to the 10% population increase? No.
What’s really going on?
Its simple, really – those who own property here
now are being taxed to pay for infrastructure
additions that are made necessary by all this development for “investment.”
In short, we are being taxed so that the money can be given to the developers, who get rich by building and selling their projects off, while we sit in the increased traffic congestion and wait an extra half-hour at a local restaurant to have dinner!
Does anyone else think there’s something wrong with this besides me?
I have no quarrel with paying for the
maintenance on the infrastructure with my property taxes. That’s reasonable – and expected. But if Peter Bos wants to put in a new condo development, and the traffic that this development will generate should be handled by adding a lane to the local highway in both directions from the Destin to MidBay bridges,
Peter’s development company should pay for the INSTALLATION of that road!We do not benefit from that road’s widening -
he does. Keeping your quality of life is not a “benefit” – but for that development, we wouldn’t need the road to be wider at all! And what, pray tell, does Peter’s development do for the local economy? Does it provide any high-paying local jobs to help the tax base? No. At most it provides a few McJobs which will be taken by Illegal Immigrants to make beds and maintain the landscaping.
This is, effectively, a transfer of
millions of taxpayer dollars to private developers. By not insisting on local governments assessing these projects
impact fees that actually cover the growth in infrastructure necessary to keep the level of service
constant, Peter’s (and others like him) profit is kept artificially high – effectively, the city and county governments are robbing the local residents at gunpoint and turning over the money to him!
This is outrageous, and it’s time for the residents of communities who live in towns like ours nationwide to take a stand and say “no more!”
I am not anti-development by any means. I want developers to come and build
if they are assessed for the CAPITAL costs they impose on the state, county and local infrastructure with their development. There is no quarrel with using the local property tax base to fund the
maintenance of that infrastructure once it is built – that is its proper and just use – but to tax people for the simple purpose of handing over the money to a private development company is no different than the eminent domain abuse that has gone on around the United States where people are literally forced out of their homes at gunpoint so that some private developer can make millions turning what was their home into a “toity foity” marina complex, all for the purpose of growing the size of the local government by increasing its tax revenue.
Its time for this nonsense to stop, and if we cannot vote the people out of office that are doing it, we have only one more approach available to us – that is for local residents to refuse to do business with any person who invests in such a property or lives in or on it, as well as any firm controlled or affiliated with these developers.
