Don Taylor's Real Estate Blog

As you may know our state legislature is about to convene a special session to (allegedly) work on reducing our real estate taxes which have grown RIDICULOUSLY high; beginning since about 2001. I have attended 2 of the Town Hall meetings here where the politicos came and listened to the citizens (AND the Bureaucrats, and Social Welfare representatives who were very well organized and used lots of "scare tactics" with dire warnings of what will happen if the budget were to be cut).

The property values in Florida started to escalate after 2000 and from 2001-2005 basically eveything doubled. Tax revenues had to have increased proportionately. Governments "bugeting" process is basically "spend as much as last year, so we get the same budget. Have you seen the cars our

LISTEN, we had all the social welfare and "quality of life" programs we needed in 2001 and I can't think of single new program that has come along since 2001, that we "can't live without", so why should a roll back to those tax levels impose any hardships.PLEASE CALL YOUR STATE SENATOR...IF YOU ARE A SECOND HOME OWNER, OWN RENTAL OR INVESTMENT PROPERTY...CALL THE SENATOR RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DISTRICT WHERE YOUR PROPERTY IS LOCATED. One of the great injustices is the Senate's "plan". The had actually proposed to toll back the tax rates to 2005-that was the PEAK of the market....doing nothing at all would actually be better, in my opinion, in that the market (and prices) starting going south in 2006....The House of Representatives has a planthat "non voters" are getting less attention that they should. We are 'supposed" to have a REPRESENTATIVE form of government....