PSL potential 15% property tax hike (Miami, Port St. Lucie: short sales, 2013, foreclosures)

[Cryinsham30]

Port St. Lucie tax rate could jump 15 percent - TC Palm

"PORT ST. LUCIE — The city is “struggling” to achieve its goals, and as a result, property owners could see a tax-rate hike this year

City Manager Jeff Bremer on Wednesday recommended a 15 percent jump in the tax rate, from $5.62 to $6.46 per $1,000 of assessed property value to cover the costs of failed and faltering city economic-development projects."

[Cryinsham30]

Question is this;

IS PSL a liberal led city council/manager etc. That just basically said

"Hey we have been wasting your tax dollars for years, but we got some more projects we wanna spend money on, give us more"

[SeetheUSA]

Not good. I know that we 3 huge financial monkey's on our backs- and nothing but money is going to get them off. While I do not like the thought of a tax increase, I see the justification for it. I just hope and pray this city has learned from it's mistakes and is going to be much more prudent with it's decisions from now on.

[Cryinsham30]

city council voted in favor of it 4-1 with dissenting vote being the mayor.

[JERSEY MAN]

I think they owe around 220 million (plus or minus) on failed or close to failing projects already. These multi million dollar projects should go up for a vote by the public, not some two bit politician that might have ties to the project.

[newred5]

the tax rate increase will be on the city of PSL taxes not your entire tax bill. Never like a tax increase but its not a huge on by any means

[Cryinsham30]

City Manager Jeff Bremer on Wednesday recommended a 15 percent jump in the tax rate, from $5.62 to $6.46 per $1,000 of assessed property value to cover the costs of failed and faltering city economic-development projects.

Not huge, but when your an outsider like me and your weighing were to buy property, and you see that Saitn lucie county has above average (in the top 10 for Florida) taxes all ready and the city is further increasing them due to their own failures, its concerning.

here is an article from 2013
10 Florida Counties With the HIGHEST Property Tax Rates

Alachua – 23.442
Volusia – 23.2216 (Ugh…this is where I live)
St. Lucie – 22.7249
Dixie – 21.9206
Broward – 21.0593
Pinellas – 21.0416
Hendry – 20.8776
Hillsborough – 20.7007
Palm Beach – 20.5622
Miami-Dade – 20.1139

*This data is from January 2013.

[aridon]

Unfortunately its necessary after the cluster they created by trying to hit home runs by drawing new high tech industry and more so, the high paying jobs attached to them.

You can't have new industry without the base to fill the jobs or the education of the local citizens to fill the jobs and expect them to survive. It was a foolish endeavor.

Plenty of established companies were looking to expand in Florida. Amazon built a huge warehouse, Costco has been making noise want to come in the area, we could use a few more restaurants and those are all jobs that the locals can fill and relatively speaking they are good paying jobs for low education / blue collar work. They could of also gone after the water park that went into Stuart or looked to establish more of a tourist presence with other options similar in nature.

Anyway, the entire thing was foolish and now the residence will pay the councils stupid tax.

[newred5]

Originally Posted by Cryinsham30

City Manager Jeff Bremer on Wednesday recommended a 15 percent jump in the tax rate, from $5.62 to $6.46 per $1,000 of assessed property value to cover the costs of failed and faltering city economic-development projects.

Not huge, but when your an outsider like me and your weighing were to buy property, and you see that Saitn lucie county has above average (in the top 10 for Florida) taxes all ready and the city is further increasing them due to their own failures, its concerning.

here is an article from 2013
10 Florida Counties With the HIGHEST Property Tax Rates

Alachua – 23.442
Volusia – 23.2216 (Ugh…this is where I live)
St. Lucie – 22.7249
Dixie – 21.9206
Broward – 21.0593
Pinellas – 21.0416
Hendry – 20.8776
Hillsborough – 20.7007
Palm Beach – 20.5622
Miami-Dade – 20.1139

*This data is from January 2013.

Any increase is unwanted, this one appears nesseacry unfortunately. Looking at my PSL portion of my taxes , the increase appears to be 16.58 for me. Now I have a townhouse that I bought quite on the downside and the price has almost doubled . Being homestead they can on,y raise my assessment 3 % a year , so the increase for me is low. If you have a higher assessed home and it's not homestead well then your cost will be higher
Yes it's all due to the failed projects that didn't turn out , hopefully it's lesson learned and forward movement from here for all of Port St Lucie

[Cryinsham30]

I too see the need for it, but what I did not see in any of the notes was effective cuts, true cuts, except 1.8M from parks and rec by not buying new vehicles for an extra year. I truly am pulling for PSL as I want to live there but if the economic advantage isnt there over say stuart, palm city or delray etc. it becomes less attractive, not just for me but others I would assume and even though home sales seem to be up, I still see a heavy inventory of foreclosures and short sales on the market. I also figure that like any other entity, once they get more money, even when those debts are paid off/assetts sold, the tax will remain and be spent on new other failure prone boondoggles. I dunno, i just feel that good leadership could put st lucie back into the black without the negative press. heres hoping.