As the smoke clears in Tallahassee we find ourselves wondering what happened to all the property tax savings we were promised. We see a small rollback in tax values accompanied by significant caveats, including one that will allow a super majority (4 of 5 in Martin County) of our Commissioners to effectively block the effects completely. What relief there is consists of relatively minor savings this year and the PROMISE of great things to come next year IF VOTERS AGREE to a complicated and convoluted program of tax “choices”.

We believe that we are actually seeing a slick political trick and, once again, State officials are taking great credit for a program that make them look good, but does little to solve the problem. At first we thought the result was going to be great for all Floridians. Now we see a “solution” that has many homeowners, land owners, rental housing and business properties shut out from any significant savings. Assuming voters approve the additional measures next year homesteaders will then have the lame choice of taking a savings now with the so called “super exemption” (and paying for it dearly down the line), or keeping their existing homestead shield with its built in cap. Our examination shows that unless your home has a market value, NOT assessed value, of less than $200,000, you are best staying with what you have. In short, there is little potential for real change.

The only good we see coming from these shenanigans is that it forced City and County Governments to really look at their spending. Spending is the key word and controlling it is the real solution. We think our County Administration acted boldly and correctly in taking on this challenge with a professional budget cutting approach. Just as private business must do in times of reduced income, all organizations utilizing government funds, must look inward for savings. Spending the public’s money wisely is their only reason for being.

The biggest single spender of the public’s money, our School Board, is not only exempted from any of these legislated reductions, but will actually receive a significant increase in funds. They need to be executing the same self-examination that our City and County Governments have been putting themselves through. We believe that considerable savings are possible if a school budget with an imposed spending cap was thoroughly evaluated. We appreciate the good job our schools are doing, but we plead with the Administration to look hard for programs and procedures that are unnecessary, watch their construction costs and keep a tight grip on maintenance and operational expenses.

Not for profit organizations that receive subsidies and support from public dollars also need to clean their nests and examine their missions. Martin County’s citizens and taxpayers are extremely generous. However, they deserve the right to know that their money is getting a job done and not being wasted on administration and programs that produce little or perform poorly.

We would also like to weigh in with advice on spending the additional ½ cent sales tax we granted our local government last year. If we cannot afford to maintain a property, then we cannot afford to buy it. If a property is not really useable by the private sector, we don’t need to buy it just to bail a landowner out of a bad deal. If a property is not truly needed for an easily defined purpose, leave it on the tax roll. We have the right to expect that these funds will be spent wisely and want to see a thorough examination of all purchases before our money is committed.

Finally we must turn our attention on ourselves, the taxpayers and voters. We should be doing the same self examination. Do we really need all the services that we demand? Can we do things privately for less than we are paying our governments to do for us? Do we really understand the financial ramifications of our actions? Why didn’t we stop to think how much a bullet train was really going to cost? Why didn’t we see the very obvious costs associated with our vote for class size reductions? Looking back we can clearly see that reducing class sizes required more schools, more teachers, more administrators, more transportation, more everything. Has the educational result justified the expense? It seems to be easy to convince voters of the worthiness of a program, while taking our elected officials off the hook for the result. We have only ourselves to blame for that.