Now time for bare bones budgets

As our local governments get deeper into their respective budget approval cycles, one theme seems to stand out above all others.

And that theme, unfortunately, is going to mean that more of us pay more in taxes than we did last year.

While the economy has recovered to some degree over the last year, we haven’t yet shaken off even half of the disastrous effects of eight years of even more disastrous national fiscal policy decisions.

Comfortable has devolved into stressful, and stressful has devolved into worried. Worried usually means already left the Keys.

Yet our elected leadership still hangs on to the rollback option. Rollback is the tax rate that will raise as much money for the local government as they had to spend last year. They tend to ignore that very few of their constituents have as much money to spend this year as last year.

Our county government has promised to come in under rollback, but not significantly so.

What we want taxpayers to understand, however, is that rollback is not a flat tax rate from last year, or even a decrease from last year. It will still be an increase.

Property values continued to decline last year, which are the assessments from which this year’s budget will be calculated.

Local real estate professionals say that the average home price has dropped back to about 2002 or 2003 levels, and appears to be headed no lower. What that generally means for the taxpayer is that if they bought prior to 2002, or in 2002, they will still see a three percent assessment increase on homesteaded property. And they will be taxed a higher percentage on that increased assessment, meaning property taxes will be higher.

That will happen not just with one taxing authority but thus far, it will happen with every taxing authority.

Bottom line—taxes are going up for many properties.

We have watched as taxing authorities have taken some cream off the top of their yearly budget spending proposals, but we are also aware that there is still low-lying fruit that can be picked off the spending tree without hampering operations.

Every taxing authority builds funded, vacant employee positions into its yearly budget requests. That keeps the positions open while no money gets spent in case an extra person or two is needed here and there to handle additional workload.

And yet we hear every year how our government staffs are running on bare bones. Then we watch as positions are filled in the course of the year following the announcement that the expense was included in the budget.

Tax rates must start going down. People can no longer afford the “if you don’t spend it you won’t get it again,” mentality of many governmental agencies.

We no longer want to hear that the next round of cuts must be in critical services until we have watched our taxing authorities scrub vacant positions from the budget and we’re sure they are really operating in a bare bones atmosphere.

That would put them on par with the rest of us that have to endure these constant tax rate increases while we watch discretionary spending dwindle, and even non-discretionary spending dwindle.

Now more than ever it is time to scrub the budget of any and all vacant positions that are budgeted, and possibly even to look at consolidating some employee functions across municipal and county lines.

Now is not the time for shy money managers. We have to have bold leadership that mandates spending cuts, and then watches closely to make sure those cuts are in non-critical areas first.

We don’t need more fear mongering and scare tactics that get enough of an outcry going from the taxpayer that we’ll let things slide for the sake of not losing something precious to us.

Give us a bare bones budget. We’ll handle the outfall.

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