IN YOUR CORNER

A continuing theme of the Taxpayers Association is that Martin County

has retired experts on many subjects, and that these people should be used

to help improve the efficiency of county government. We have continuously offered

help and Administrator Blackburn has taken us up on our offer. We have been asked to help in the new county benchmarking project. A benchmark is a known standard; the word comes from land surveying, where a benchmark is a positively known location that can be the basis for other surveys.

County departments divide their work into specific operations. They have been asked to select ways to measure their success including comparisons with other governmental entities who are known to perform a specific operation well, and to make the performance of this standard their benchmark, their minimum goal. This involves establishing all of the

costs and performance demands in the operation, and then finding an entity with very similar statistics.

To help the departments in this difficult task, we are asking for volunteers who are knowledgeable in Property Acquisition, Airport Operations, Library Operations, Emergency Services Operations (that is the Fire Department and Emergency Medical Services) , and Community Services Operations.

As a volunteer you will be embarking on an ambitious program to bring better government to the citizens of Martin County, you will meet many nice and interesting people, and you will gain a much better idea of how government works. We have never had a volunteer who did not volunteer again.

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The Florida School Construction Finance Commission, hereafter FSCFC, was created in 1999 and charged with studying alternative methods of funding school construction. At the same time, a moratorium on school impact fee increases was put in effect. Schools have been funded by property taxes and/or impact fees. Property taxes affect current and future taxpayers; impact fees affect new construction. We support the idea of addressing this convoluted issue on a state wide basis, but we don't understand the suspension of impact fee increases prior to a study being made. Based on testimony subsequently presented, the FSCFC determined that impact fees were not an appropriate source for school construction funding because the revenues cannot be used to secure capital debt financing (bonds). The commission also heard testimony that these fees target a segment of society that is not clearly linked to the need for school construction, and since impact fees must be linked to the need they create, the commission recommended that school impact fees be replaced with other funding sources.

The commission basically recommended that the school districts be authorized to levy a sales tax of 1 cent, which would replace the present 2 mil property tax, or a tax of 1/2 cent which would replace 1 mil of the present tax. The lure of the sales tax is that it collects

money from non-residents, and is a stable source of capital, but we must remember that by far the largest portion of the tax is paid by permanent residents. While impact fees are applied unequally around the state and cannot secure the capital funding required to bring schools up to appropriate standards throughout the state, they certainly could be used

in conjunction with other taxes that can secure such funding..

Impact fees are generally seen as a legal source of funding new infrastructure, yet all impact fees suffer from the same controversies as schools. We feel that a state-wide approach to all fees might be warranted.

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We are sorry to state that we had to cancel a very interesting Public Forum, originally scheduled for April 7. It was determined that there were not enough advance reservations to warrant taking public servants' time to participation in the presentation. We had worked hard on gathering speakers and information on various forms of local government, and on incorporation and annexation and their direct effect on taxes. We're not giving up on the idea, however, and will try to do this again at a later date. When a new date is announced, please make your reservation quickly if you wish to attend.