Not just Lemon Bay - CC to hike MSBU fees big time (Clearwater: 2015, foreclosed)

[Restrain]

Charlotte County homeowners could pay hundreds more in taxes | WINK NEWS

[MikMal]

Makes me wonder how they pick the roads that need resurfacing. I've seen some re-surfaced earlier this spring that looked just fine prior to the re-surfacing, but yet on the other hand see busier roads, like Collingswood Blvd, that actually have weeds growing in the cracks of the road surface and no work is done on them.
It would make the tax increase much more palatable if one had confidence that the $$ was being spent wisely. Sadly, in this county, I don't have too much confidence that that is the case!

[imagardener]

I will be attending the Lemon Bay MSBU meeting at Tringali Thursday 5 pm.

The whole way Charlotte County is billing MSBU's is very unfair because it is not based on property value, as property taxes are, and the MSBU benefits rich people and hits poor people with a large $$ when compared with their property taxes.

By billing the MSBU instead of including it in general property taxes based on property value the commissioners get to brag that they didn't raise taxes but THEY DID and in some cases people's actual taxes including the MSBU increase may be going up 25%. And this tax is not protected by the homestead cap and no allowance made for disabled or veterans or anything else.

Yes there needs to be a capital fund for road repaving and drainage but MSBU is an extremely unfair way to do it.
And because my Lemon Bay district includes the north side of Winchester Blvd I suspect we current homeowners are paying for the development of that area when those future owners and especially the developers, who will be making big bucks, should be putting up big bucks now for that work.

If the commissioners approve the MSBU as it is currently billed they will be voted out of office (unless we start a recall effort and get it done earlier).

[Travelassie]

Originally Posted by imagardener

I will be attending the Lemon Bay MSBU meeting at Tringali Thursday 5 pm.

The whole way Charlotte County is billing MSBU's is very unfair because it is not based on property value, as property taxes are, and the MSBU benefits rich people and hits poor people with a large $$ when compared with their property taxes.

By billing the MSBU instead of including it in general property taxes based on property value the commissioners get to brag that they didn't raise taxes but THEY DID and in some cases people's actual taxes including the MSBU increase may be going up 25%. And this tax is not protected by the homestead cap and no allowance made for disabled or veterans or anything else.

Yes there needs to be a capital fund for road repaving and drainage but MSBU is an extremely unfair way to do it.
And because my Lemon Bay district includes the north side of Winchester Blvd I suspect we current homeowners are paying for the development of that area when those future owners and especially the developers, who will be making big bucks, should be putting up big bucks now for that work.

If the commissioners approve the MSBU as it is currently billed they will be voted out of office (unless we start a recall effort and get it done earlier).

My husband and I attended the meeting they had on 7/20 for the Peace River Shores and about 4 other MSBU divisions. My husband asked them what had been done with the assessments they had been collecting for years, their response was that they had been mowing public areas, medians and so on for that. Other folks pointed out that many of the uninhabited empty lots were worth much less than the projected taxes, including the increase in those assessments, so this made the lots nearly impossible to sell. What the county might plan to do with potentially a large number of foreclosed on lots is anyone's guess, but I could imagine the county might figure it could increase the assessments on the occupied lots even more to make up for that shortfall. That is approximately 350 occupied lots versus 1400 unoccupied lots in Peace River Shores, according to county records?

They listened to everything everyone had to say, and stated basically that the paved roads in Peace River Shores are in lousy shape (even if they look ok, what do you peons know) and they have no records showing when those roads were last paved so don't know when they were. The biggest part of their budget was the costs of repaving, and they stated that if they waited to pave those roads until they "failed", the costs would increase 3 to 4 times the estimated costs now and involve even higher property owner assessments ( IMO that smacked more of scare tactics than anything else).

Then the commissioners voted to approve those increases in assessments as shown, as though they had not heard a word anyone said.

As folks have mentioned, we will remember this when the commissioners are up for re-election.

[Travelassie]

Originally Posted by imagardener

I will be attending the Lemon Bay MSBU meeting at Tringali Thursday 5 pm.

The whole way Charlotte County is billing MSBU's is very unfair because it is not based on property value, as property taxes are, and the MSBU benefits rich people and hits poor people with a large $$ when compared with their property taxes.

By billing the MSBU instead of including it in general property taxes based on property value the commissioners get to brag that they didn't raise taxes but THEY DID and in some cases people's actual taxes including the MSBU increase may be going up 25%. And this tax is not protected by the homestead cap and no allowance made for disabled or veterans or anything else.

Yes there needs to be a capital fund for road repaving and drainage but MSBU is an extremely unfair way to do it.
And because my Lemon Bay district includes the north side of Winchester Blvd I suspect we current homeowners are paying for the development of that area when those future owners and especially the developers, who will be making big bucks, should be putting up big bucks now for that work.

If the commissioners approve the MSBU as it is currently billed they will be voted out of office (unless we start a recall effort and get it done earlier).

The proposed assessment on our property increases our property taxes by about 30%.

[MartyGras]

If find it interesting that some think the MSBU system is unfair.

What could be more fair than having the property owners who's properties border a street pay for its maintenance.

Also why should a properties value have any bearing on how much a property should pay for the road.

Gary

[Travelassie]

Originally Posted by MartyGras

If find it interesting that some think the MSBU system is unfair.

What could be more fair than having the property owners who's properties border a street pay for its maintenance.

Also why should a properties value have any bearing on how much a property should pay for the road.

Gary

I called and asked the MSBU folks how an MSBU equivalent was determined. Couldn't figure out why our property was listed as 2.5 MSBU equivalents, especially when our neighbors, some of whom have as much property as we do, are listed at 1.0

Seems they refer back to when our property was platted by the number of lots. We have six 45 foot wide x approx 150 ft long lots, and we built the house on three of those lots. Although we had all those lots consolidated for property tax purposes after the house was built, that is not the way the MSBU considers the property for their purposes. They consider the 3 lots on which the house is built as one MSBU, and the other three "uninhabited" lots as 0.5MSBU each ( 45 ft wide is not buildable, 90 feet wide is required, so these are considered 0.5 units each. Or1.5 total. Ok, it is what it is.

What gets me about this whole thing is the lack of county records showing how the money they have already collected for each area has been spent, work that they say has been done and where they get thefigures they quote. Seems to me there should be
more accountability to the folks paying the bills.

[imagardener]

Originally Posted by MartyGras

If find it interesting that some think the MSBU system is unfair.

What could be more fair than having the property owners who's properties border a street pay for its maintenance.

Also why should a properties value have any bearing on how much a property should pay for the road.

Gary

Do you know of any other counties that pay for road paving this way? From what I've read Charlotte County has the highest use/cost of MSBU's nationwide and road paving is the major part of this tax.

Most US jurisdictions use gasoline taxes or transportation taxes or plain old property taxes to pay for roads instead of dividing up the county into small areas (called MSBU's). By dividing up the areas the commissioners have limited the amount of impact each homeowner has in voting them out of office.

It is a very regressive tax and does not reflect what each homeowner actually "uses" in terms of roads.
MSBU's are also not limited by "homestead" cap and make no allowance for disability, veterans, widows, etc. For some older people who've owned their homes a long time this additional proposed $249 tax could force them to sell their home due to this unplanned expense.

Road paving and drainage should be a line item in the overall county expenses that make up each homeowners property tax which is a much fairer way to apportion tax. (Not saying property taxes are always fair, just saying property tax is a more equitable form of taxation than MSBU.)

[Harbor Hopper]

Originally Posted by Travelassie

As folks have mentioned, we will remember this when the commissioners are up for re-election.

Sorry, but nobody will remember. Thousands of folks said the same thing 2 yrs ago when the commissioners voted to move forward with the ridiculously expensive and unnecessary sewer expansion in PC. Voting against the people, the people in return voted the same crooks back into office for another term.

[wpc691]

This makes me remember when we moved to Clearwater in the 80's. Many smaller backwater streets were still crushed shell. They looked perfectly fine, tropical even, and seemed to work perfectly fine. I'd have no problem if our little deadend street was crushed shell - of course, then there'd be no kickbacks, campaign contributions, etc. I went back to our old neighborhood a year ago, and all those little streets have been long since bulldozed, and covered with 6-story condo buildings and lots of asphalt.