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Mismanaged City
• Taxpayer Money
By
Taxpayer
Monday,
November 16, 2009
I just wanted to add a message to the city officials and MCRA. How do you think it looks when I'm loosing my house and at the same time you are raising my property taxes?, then I walk down the street and you are installing Royal Palms? What do you want me to think or say to you? I understand that we need to upkeep the city but hard times call for hard decisions. It's not the time to be raising taxes but allowing the people that pay the taxes to take a breath to recoup and to strengthen. Then you can come back and ask them to pay something more to beautify the city.
Take a look at the property that the CRA bought 3 years ago (the SWAP SHOP) on which the county and the City of Margate use to collect $31,495.01 in property taxes. Now, since it belongs to the City, we do not collect anything. So not only did the city spend 15 million dollars on the property, it's already lost 30% of it's value because it was purchased for top dollar during the boom years.
Nice going guys. Smart veeeery smart. You guys should apply at AIG they hire people as smart as you. And this is just one property. Add up tax dollars from the rest of them and you will see how much money the city has lost from property taxes, then add what goes to the CRA as increment taxes and you probably find that the 4 million shortfall is not because values went down but because the city was mismanaged. The tax base was destroyed and now we call it a shortfall and need to raise the taxes of properties left to tax. Who is at fault here? City manager? commissioners? the attorney? all of them? Maybe the citizens/voters for allowing you to do all this.
I like to know where do commissioners get the idea that you can treat taxpayer money and a city as a private/public investment company and start buying properties all around the city. If it was a private or public investment company then you can do whatever you want with your money, well not anymore because even public companies today hold their CEO’s accountable. Maybe there is legal action here to take against the people responsible for putting taxpayer money at risk by investing without first outlining the risks the investor/taxpayer will be taking.
Are there any minutes and study outlining those risks prior to the commissioners taking these risks? Were taxpayers informed about the risk and given the chance to say “no I do not feel comfortable taking such a big risk. A question every taxpayer/investor should be asking his / herself, because don’t forget if the city was treated as a private investment company, then commissioners should be treated as CEO’s or brokers and should be held accountable by legal action.
- Taxpayer
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