Property Tax Relief is nowhere in sight

The property tax bill will see an increase of at least 50%. But, the month of May has passed and you don't have that property tax bill, and there is probably a good reason, especially with this being an election year. The local elected officials on city council has failed through the years to hold departments accountable and now are suffering under a city budget out of control.

Out of control, because the city and county budget is squeezing certain residents, homeowners. Homeowners are paying for the bloated budget from mismanagement. Instead of reduction of staff members or consolidating departments that provide duplicated services, elected officials have approved budgets year after year without oversight that have burdened the taxpayers. Every year these elected officials have seen the burden on the taxpayer ( they receive tax bills) and have done nothing. That is until now. Why? Because senior citizens are losing their homes from not being able to pay their taxes!

The State Legislature warned the local government by placing a circuit breaker on local government, yet local government figured out ways to still circumvent the circuit breaker by over assessing home while simultaneously increasing the tax rate on homeowner. How did elected officials explain the outrageous increases? They didn't, instead elected officials stated it was too complicated for the average taxpayer to understand.

State legislators feed up with local government has placed the burden on local government on explaining to the taxpayer the increases in property taxes at the local level.

Local government to escape the blame for rising property taxes are now seeking ways to raise funds to maintain their bloated budgets and departments are attempting to introduce an increase in income taxes. They are seeking new ways to explain how they are going to convince you stay with property taxes because you would lose by going to an income tax system. The justification for going toward income taxes is that the burden for increase property taxes is too high. When the fact is that local government will no longer be able to blame state government for the tweaking of numbers or computers glitches in robbing homeowners of their hard earned dollars.