Are you kidding me? While everyone else is paring costs due to public outcry, the SFWM district has no problem taking every extra penny in property tax increase. Property values in the district went up 19.1% and they are taking 18.3% of it to add to their budget. (reference http://www.sfwmd.gov/images/pdfs/C_Fin_OverviewFY06.pdf) How much is that?
$115 million increase this year in property tax revenue. 25% more bucks. Where’s the money going?
Since I don’t have enough knowledge about specific projects to comment on why their budgets have gone up, and since they involve construction costs which have gone up drastically, let’s look at operational expenses. They call them MISSION SUPPORT. Certainly operational expenses are in the specific project budgets but think of this as ‘corporate headquarters’.
Mission Support 2005=$97,712,679 2006= 114,541,532 TOTAL INCREASE 16,828,853 17.2%
Again, the old double digit increase. While insurance costs have gone up, I have to suspect there is a lack of control. After all, the money is there in property taxes. No one will complain if there taxes don’t change much, right? The burden will again fall on snowbirds and businesses. Tennessee and North Carolina are laughing it up all the way to the bank.