Category Archives: TAXATION

The Duties of Citizenship

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Most of us have relatively little interaction with city or county governments. That is until we are in trouble and need police or fire/rescue, need a permit of some sort, or want to make a complaint. In some ways, it is too bad one of those situations will be our introduction to city hall or the county administration building.

We are all responsible for government performance. We cannot treat local government services as we would shopping in a store or as if we were consulting an attorney. For government to be at its best, every citizen should be ready to contribute time and energy to make it work.

We should view being a citizen as an active responsibility. Involvement is key to having good government. If we allow our municipality and county to govern without our input, we are asking for a bad outcome. Citizens need to take advantage of the opportunities afforded for civic involvement such as serving on community boards and other volunteer opportunities.

If citizens are not involved, mistrust begins to develop between government employees and the people they are there to serve. Residents have a civic responsibility to be part of government’s workings. I know that only a few will be able to devote hours to being involved but taking one of the citizen’s academies (see links below) offered will open your eyes to how your government operates.

We can’t have good government without everyone being part of the government. Go to your local council or commission meeting and see how you are being represented. How can you vote to keep someone in a job if you have no idea what they are doing in your name? In the larger governments, that Council Member or Commissioner is being paid a salary and receiving benefits such as medical and pension. Like any employee, they are not anxious to lose their jobs and citizens are the ones those employees report to.

Ask questions of staff and elected officials. Make sure that they understand what is coming before them. From my own experience, I can tell when an elected official or appointed board member has not looked at the agenda package that they are supposedly voting upon at that meeting. The public should not let those acting in our name off the hook for this inattention.

But, when staff, elected officials, or appointed board members are not prepared and do not take their positions seriously, our governments run much less efficiently and our taxes increase. It is the citizens that allow the carelessness and inattention to detail to continue, and then those same citizens whine about the result. In order to hold people accountable, you must have some understanding about how and what those people are supposed to accomplish. That takes involvement and knowledge.

It is incumbent on all citizens to spend an hour or two monitoring and understanding government. If you have more time, you can volunteer. Meet with your elected officials and question their decisions and understand their motives. It probably is a bad sign if a Commissioner doesn’t want to schedule an appointment with you, the constituent. The more you know, the less you will be fooled.

 

 

Here are links to two citizen academies. Stuart Police Department also has one.

https://www.martin.fl.us/CARES

http://www.sheriff.martin.fl.us/citizens-academy.html

 

And So It Begins (From The Martin County Taxpayers Association

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Here is a piece I wrote for the Taxpayers Association. To read more go to:  https://mctaxpayers.org/articles-2/

The governments of Martin County are beginning their budget processes for the upcoming fiscal year.

As they begin to put together their operating, capital improvement plan, and enterprise fund budgets, the public will see that there will be increases in various taxes and fees.  It is a bit early to tell where and how these increases will manifest themselves. Given the state of the various governments finances and the services they will need to provide, it is hard not to believe that taxes will be higher in the coming year.

The Martin County Taxpayers Association has begun analyzing and gathering information regarding the upcoming budget year for the various governments of the County. It is important that the individual taxpayer understands why increases will be proposed and whether they are justified. The Taxpayers Association can analyze the numbers, but it isn’t always easy to know whether a proposed project is necessary. Further, many times, we do not have the expertise to know whether a less expensive alternative exists.

That is why having more citizen volunteers that can delve into the minutia of a subject is necessary.  For example, if you currently or in a former life worked for a road construction company, perhaps you could look at a proposed road improvement and help us point out a less expensive alternative. As in the private sector, government needs to evolve and improve the way it provides services to their clients, the taxpayers.

The Martin County Taxpayers Association is a volunteer organization that can only be as good as the members willing to help in this work. While we have a dedicated board, the association can always use more help in our legislative, observation and membership committees.

Each resident and citizen is a consumer of government services. Some may take advantage of one service more than other residents (e.g., the library system).  If that library user thinks there is a way to provide all or part of the library services in a more cost-effective way, we would welcome an opportunity to partner with him/her to help determine where potential savings or efficiencies exist. If need be, we could show an interested volunteer where in the budget that item is listed. Our organization is an entirely volunteer group, so our strength comes from having a diversity of expertise and a willingness to use that expertise for the benefit of all taxpayers.

This organization believes that we are a partner with elected officials and their staffs to help provide better government for as low a cost as possible. We are not an anti-tax organization but rather a smart tax organization. Every dollar collected from the taxpayers should be used to buy the best level of service. This is what the citizens of the County deserve.

 

All Laws & Regulation Are Not Needed

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When someone is in government as an elected official, the official develops a tendency to believe that every problem can be solved by passing a law or ordinance. These actions make everyone feel as if they have accomplished something. Have they really done so?

This tendency of elected officials to solve every problem through legislation is natural for them. That is their tool and, therefore, using it is what they come to know. Looking in hindsight, I don’t believe I was any different when I was an elected official.

Every societal problem cannot be solved this way.

I see this attitude by elected officials over and over: The inability of a commissioner to accept his or her very limited practical scope of authority. By this I mean that, yes, commissioners have the legal authority to pass or change ordinances, but should it be exercised in this way and to such an extent?

Can local government pass an ordinance mandating that no tree can be cut down in a person’s yard without a permit? In Florida today, the answer is yes. However, ordinances such as that have led to the Legislature trying to pass bills to pre-empt that authority from local governments.

There are times that local governments should pass ordinances to curtail egregious behavior within their jurisdictions. If your town is in a resort area, there may be a justifiable reason to regulate short-term rentals within your community.

Often local regulation does not hinge on a need as much as a complaint over a single incident. In Stuart, the entire Commission and City staff have been thrown into a tizzy over a duplex owner that erected a front yard 6-foot fence. To my knowledge, there has never been another incident regarding front yard fences.

There have been complaints from other neighbors on this block of duplexes. Having seen the fence, I don’t blame the residents for their anger. But, because of this one incident, a “Zoning in Progress” has been passed by the Commission. This means that any new front yard fence permits in the entire City will be decided at the discretion of the Development Director until a new ordinance is passed.

Now, thousands of tax dollars are being spent on countless hours of staff time to rewrite the code because of this one incident. The original culprit will still be there because it was grandfathered under the old code. What the Board should do is prohibit front yard fences in this two-block neighborhood of attached homes and leave the rest of Stuart under the existing regulations.

In government, this is not an isolated incident. This is an example of regulation which is not “smart.” You couldn’t call it over regulation because a problem in a narrow section of Stuart does exist. But what the Commission is doing by using this one incident is changing a regulation that has worked for the past half-century. Many people in neighborhoods such as mine have or will want a fence to make sure their dog or kid can’t leave the front yard. They may find they can’t or will be limited to how high or of what material the fence can be.

This unneeded regulation is what gives the Legislature the plausible argument of pre-empting local governments from passing other regulations which are actually needed.

The Legislature is not immune to using the same rationale, only on a statewide basis. It occurs when the Legislator, a friend or one constituent runs into a local ordinance that prevents him or her from doing something. The one thing all politicians have in common, whether on a state or local level, is their ability to believe that all problems have a legislative solution.

Every elected official should not jump to the conclusion that a law passed will equate to a problem solved. In most cases, a smart lawyer or wily citizen will find a way to get around that prohibition. The answer to every problem, or even most problems, cannot be solved by legislation or regulation.

Our Martin County Future

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What do we expect the future to bring for Stuart and Martin County? If we look at our current County Commission, we know that it is about to experience change to its composition. With the indictment of Commissioners Heard and Fielding on public records violations, there will probably be different people sitting in those seats. This could occur this year by resignation or removal by the Governor or next year at the ballot box.

Both Heard and Fielding have a distinct point of view on development that precluded growth outside the Urban Services Boundary (USB). They also fought development within those boundaries. I agree with much of their philosophy outside the USB boundaries. I differ with them within those boundaries. If you want stop sprawl, and both say that is their stated goal, you need to allow density within the USB.

Sprawl occurs when you have mono-functional development. Under the current Comprehensive Plan, 20-acre ranchettes are allowed. It may be that you won’t be able to see your neighbor, but this is development away from jobs and shops. Regardless of the type of housing, you still will need roads, schools and other services. The people who live in these scattered communities will need gas stations and stores.

Therefore, if you want to keep agriculture, you need to concentrate population and growth within our cities and towns. If you want Martin County to avoid what occurred in South Florida and the I-4 corridor, then we need to plan better for sustainable development. The blanket “no” so often heard by businesses from the county needs to be tempered to allow for reasonable and smart growth.

At some point the Urban Services Boundary will need to be expanded. But, for now and the immediate future, let’s have infill development and re-purpose properties that are no longer economically feasible. Our half-empty 1960-type retail strips and our aging housing stock need to be re-developed. More and more people want to be part of a community, to know their neighbors and walk to a store. Isn’t it rational that we not be tied to mid-20th century development patterns?

I am not advocating some central plan where we herd everyone into condos. I am saying that we need to look at trends to determine what type of lifestyle we will have in 10, 20 or 50 years. Infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain so, before we commit to expanding Martin County’s, we need to look to what the future will bring.

As we look at the Martin County of the future, do we continue to do things in the same way or open our minds to a more wholistic approach? Do we look at one project coming forth at a time or do we have a Comprehensive Plan that can be used as a planning document for growth instead of a document that impedes it? Stuart should be a center of a new urban dynamism. Along with our sister cities, we should be where the action is. We should be the engines of economic and population growth. Martin County should be thinking of why county government exists. It should exist not to provide urban services but to function as political subdivision of the state. Let new cities be formed out of all the current county CRAs.

There will be nearly 21 million Floridians by the end of 2017. Does anyone really believe that Martin County will be left out of having an increasing population? Just in the past two months there has been an influx of more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans fleeing the ravages of Maria and bad government. People from the entire U.S. want to live and work in our state. Eventually some subset will find Martin County. Let’s be prepared.