Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/130753
Sarasota News Leader May 17, 2013 OPINION The property appraiser resisted initially, knowing what a wholesale reduction in values would do to local government budgets. When he finally started slashing values, it was too late: He was ousted in the next election. For the past six years, property tax values have continued to fall in Sarasota County. In 2007, they peaked at $86 billion. By 2012, those values had plummeted to slightly more than $51 billion, a decline of 40 percent. And the effect on local governments was no different. Sarasota County, for example, saw a comparable decline in property tax revenue during that period. Page 62 the County Commission — in the form of a 40 percent cut in ad valorem taxes. As the economies for the State of Florida and Sarasota County have been more clearly moving along the road to recovery, there has been a strange reluctance by the County Commission to translate that recovery into meaningful support for county government and the essential programs and services it provides. Too often during the past six years, the automatic response to any suggestion that tax rates should be adjusted upward has been similar to Commissioner Joe Barbetta's statement at an April 30 budget workshop: "From The County Commission has strived to main- my perspective, [tax increases] are off the tatain most services during those years, but it ble." has been relying on its reserve fund to avoid Perhaps that is the curse of having an all-Redraconian cuts in those services. Tax increas- publican County Commission: No one wants es have largely been ignored as a counter to to even have a conversation about increasthe drop in property values. And there is the ing tax rates to offset the dramatic decline in rub. property values since 2007. It is as if the 40 Whatever one might say about the effects of the Great Recession, those most impacted were at the lower echelons of the economy. The well-off generally have been affected by low interest rates on demand deposits and debentures, or an inability to recoup an investment in the event that a property was sold. When all has been said and done, county property owners actually received a gift from the property appraiser — in collaboration with percent tax cut county residents have enjoyed was a present from the economic gods, and the commissioners are powerless to take any of it back in the form of higher millage rates. However, as Barbetta also is fond of saying, commissioners are elected to make the hard decisions. That should not mean deciding only what programs and services to cut in a time when declining property values have reduced ad valorem revenue. It also should mean mak-