Are your property taxes too high?

Let's talk property taxes. You know, the ones that pay for schools, roads, police and fire protection, the county health department and stuff like that. While you may not know how much income tax you paid last year, you probably would come close to the right amount of your property taxes. Everyone gripes about them.

Are your property taxes too high? On what do you base your answer? Really, what's the benchmark? What if your property taxes could be cut in half? Would they seem more reasonable then?

It just so happens that I'm living in the middle of an interesting experiment in tax relativity. As you may know from reading previous posts, my wife and I have built a new home in Ocala, Florida. We moved in at the end of last October. We're back in WNY this summer to try to sell our home in Fredonia. As such, we're living in two different places at pretty much the same time.

Through the magic of the internet, and the fact that both Dunkirk and Ocala newspapers are available online, we have been able to stay in touch with what's happening in both "homes."

The Ocala Star Banner reports that last Friday a "bombshell" was dropped in the schools of Marion County. We'll get to that in a minute.

First, you should know that while many in WNY are trying to get some of the smaller school districts to merge for the sake of efficiency and the ability to offer a complete educational program, Florida is years ahead of NY in this regard. All schools in each Florida county are controlled by a single countywide school board and administration. Can you imagine the hassle that would be involved in doing this in our WNY counties?

Ocala, located in Marion County, is in central Florida about 90 minutes northwest of Orlando. In population, it's about twice the size of Jameston, NY. Ocala's largest industries are agriculture, race horses and old people. Most of the horses you see in the Derby, Preakness, etc. were born and bred in the Ocala area. There are lots of "55+" communities--you must be 55 or older to live there--in the Ocala area. Part of the most famous such community--"The Villages"--is located in Marion County.

No, we didn't build in The Villages. We looked but went elsewhere. But that's a different story.

The home we built in Florida has about the same full value as the one we have in Fredonia. Our property taxes in NY are about $3900. In Florida, they will be a bit less than $1600. We're in the Forestville school district, so our NY property taxes might be considerably higher if we lived in the Village of Fredonia and the Fredonia Central School District.

We think that this big drop in property taxes is wonderful. But the people in Florida don't have the advantage of living in two places at the same time and they believe that their property taxes are oppressive.

Let's understand that it's tough to see Florida as a high-tax state. There is no state income tax. There used to be a tax on investments, etc. but that was abolished several years ago. Sales tax pays a large portion of the tax load in Florida, and we thank you for visiting Florida and leaving your sales taxes with us. Are sales tax rates high? We pay a 6% sales tax in Ocala, considerably less that WNY.

As I said, my Florida neighbors believe that they are being taxed to death. In the last year efforts to raise  funds for the local nonprofit hospital--to keep it from being sold to a for-profit hospital chain--were voted down. As was an effort to raise the needed funds for maintenance of the Marion County school buildings. Combined, these two tax increases would have meant about $130/year for the average homeowner. Voters said no.

Florida is no different from NY in that times have been tough for schools in the last few years. State aid has shrunk, but buildings still need to be maintained, busses run, staff paid, etc. The schools in both states have made valiant attempts to control costs. In order to keep tax increases low or nonexistent they have spent down their "rainy day" savings to a point at which they are mostly gone.

Then, last Friday, the Marion County School Superintendent dropped a bombshell. He announced that there was a $29-million deficit in the 2013-2014 school budget. To begin to address that shortfall, there will be 261 layoffs including firing all 160 first-year teachers and 72 teacher aides. There will also be 58 positions cut in art, music and phys. ed.

Now here's the icing on this cake. The fired first-year teachers will be replaced by certified substitutes paid $18,000/year with no benefits.

Read that last paragraph again because Ocala, Florida just may be the canary in the coal mines of NY public education. Most upstate districts have been using their reserves to keep the wolf from the door and it won't be long before those reserves are exhausted. If Florida residents paying half the taxes that NY folks pay won't vote to support their schools, it's unlikely that local NY taxpayers will step up.

But there's a bit more to the Florida story, besides the fact that school board members are paid $36,000/year in Marion county. Last year the state effectively reduced teacher salaries by 3%. This year, the state is giving teachers a $2500 raise.

The head of the Marion County School Board has said that the 160 first-year teachers can keep their jobs if all the Marion County teachers donate their raises to the school district.

By the way, if it weren't for tenure I doubt that it would be the first-year teachers being fired to help the budget. The move away from tenure is simply an attempt to make it easier to throw experienced--and more expensive--teachers overboard.

Thousands of NY teachers and their supporters are rallying in Albany to defend public education. Let's support them before our schools are privatized and all teachers earn $18,000/year with no benefits. Imagine the quality of teachers then!