It's Your Money

Our phones have been ringing off the hook with calls from County residents who are concerned and wanting to know more about the August 25th “Stormwater Service Assessment” letter they received last week. The essence of the document was a tentative assessment on your property and an explanation of how that fee was determined. In short, if you are a resident of an unincorporated area of Martin County the Commission has decided that you are now going to pay a “fee” for the infrastructure and personnel that protect your property from flooding rather than receive this “service” as a result of your property taxes. The Ad Valorem (property) taxes that previously paid for this service were based on a Commission established millage rate multiplied by the Tax Assessor’s determined taxable value of your property. This new “assessment” will replace this tax with a fee based on the estimated impervious surface area or “Equivalent Stormwater Units” of your property. It sets a fixed fee of $7.10 per month for each ESU (1 ESU = 3,428 square feet) the minimum for a single-family residence. Larger properties will pay multiples of the ESU fee based on the ESTIMATED amount of surface that inhibits soil absorption of rainwater. The County argues that this is a fair and more representative way to account for the actual cost of the service – but who makes this determination?

Even if this assessment was being initiated to achieve fairness it is missing the mark. A large percentage of Martin County residents live in areas controlled by associations (HOAs, POAs,COAs) that already provide for stormwater control/removal. Most paid for the infrastructure needed when they purchased the property since an H-P-COA community would not have been approved without them in place. These associations become responsible for the upkeep of their inherited stormwater systems when they assume control from the developer. They must then either accumulate contingency funds from their internal “dues” or assess as needed to maintain their system. In other words, if you live in an association you are almost certain to already be paying for this service for your community. We are still looking into how this stormwater assessment will impact businesses and industry, but with a 15-20% increase in their proposed stormwater budget for 2010 chances are it will not be favorable.

Unfortunately, this assessment was never intended to achieve fairness, but to address the real problem – the alleged need for more County revenue. The County Engineer believes there is a requirement to increase the budget for Stormwater projects by some 1-2 million dollars for 2010. As we all know, the value of homes and business property in Martin County have dramatically declined and all other tax revenues (sales tax, fuel tax, etc) are also down. Combine this situation with the Property Tax Limiting Constitutional Amendment voters approved and the Commission’s ability to generate additional revenue is severely limited. With this assessment they can maintain or even slightly increase property millage while avoiding State restrictions and still significantly increase revenue. Also, there is always reluctance by elected officials to be seen raising taxes, especially in an election year. This “assessment” isn’t legally a tax so it avoids the restrictions – and just might not be viewed as one by voters.

In spite of all of the above, our largest concern is that this was not an isolated decision, but just the first attempt to use ASSESSMENTS rather than TAXES to fund required County functions. The Fire/Rescue Service has already hired a consultant to devise a plan to transfer funding of their services to an assessment. They briefed a preliminary plan to the County Commission in July that recommended moving the Fire Service portion (Rescue Service cannot legally be assessed in Florida) of their 2010 budget to an assessment. This was not pursued by the Commission for 2010 but is rumored to be a distinct possibility for 2011.

Since Martin County has multi-tasked our Fire/EMS personnel and use ambulances as well as fire equipment for Rescue response, the cost for these two separate functions is difficult to separate. The consultant performed a three-year look-back study of actual fire response costs. They believe their data would support an assessment of 60% of the current $38.77 million Fire/Rescue budget to a separate Fire Service assessment – even though there is better than a 10 to 1 ratio of EMS (ambulance) responses to fires of any kind.

The Fire/EMS proposed 2010 operating budget is some 97% personnel costs due to 42 new hires and 30 positions created this year. The problem is under control this year and 2010 because overtime has been reduced and thirty-three of these new personnel are 90% funded by a federal grant. Unfortunately, that grant rapidly decreases to zero over the following three years and there will be capital fire equipment to replace. We believe the total amount that would be redistributed to a separate Fire Service assessment in 2011 could amount to over $30 million with an additional $20-25 million collected in property taxes. Much of this increase will be placed on agricultural land because of the study’s documented high cost of brush fires.

We already know that by changing ANY property taxes to assessments, veterans, churches and all other tax reduced/exempt organizations will be fully subject to these fees. We also know that the IRS will not allow assessments to be deducted from the federal income tax - two more ways many of our residents will lose on these schemes.

Many have asked what can be done? How can this be stopped? The answer is simple. Let your Commissioners know that the answer to reduced revenues is reduced spending, not creating new ways to generate revenue from those already struggling in this economic downturn. Immediately flood Commissioners with e-mails and attend the September 15 th Commission meeting on the subject en mass. Contact information for them is available at http://www.martin.fl.us.

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