“I like to try to cut taxes, but we’ve got a lot of priorities”: Alachua County Commission cuts property tax rate despite Prizzia’s plea
BY JENNIFER CABRERA
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – During the evening portion of their July 11 meeting, the Alachua County Commission formally approved a cut in property tax rates for Fiscal Year 2024 despite a plea from Chair Anna Prizzia to leave taxes at the same rate to fund their priorities.
Property tax
County Manager Michele Lieberman proposed the property tax rate decrease on June 14 during her annual budget presentation. Although increases in property values will result in tax increases for most property owners, the County’s property tax millage is now set to decrease for the seventh year in a row, from 7.7662 mills in the current fiscal year to 7.6414 in the upcoming year. The tax rate could potentially be set lower when the board takes its final vote in September, but it cannot be increased without sending out additional notices to taxpayers.
The rollback rate (the rate at which the County would raise the same revenue, given the increases in property values) is 7.1074, which would have raised $4.2 million more than the current fiscal year’s property tax revenue (the increase is mainly due to new construction). The proposed millage rate of 7.6414 mills will raise about $15 million more than the current year’s revenues. The MSTU Law Enforcement millage will remain the same at 3.5678 mills, which will raise about $2.8 million more than the current year.
Commissioner Ken Cornell said, “So, commissioners, we can’t go up, can always go down.” He made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation, and Commissioner Chuck Chestnut seconded the motion.
Chair Anna Prizzia said, “We’ve got a lot of priorities, folks. I get it. I like to try to cut taxes, I like to make things less expensive, but we’ve got a lot of priorities, so we’ve been dumping them on the staff lately. We even had to dip into reserves this year because of a priority, so I’m just bringing that up, just throwing it out there.”
Cornell replied, “I said that,” and Prizzia said, “I know, but you moved staff’s recommendation.” Prizzia then called for the vote, which was 4-0 in favor of Cornell’s motion, with Commissioner Mary Alford absent. Cornell said to Prizzia, “You voted for staff’s recommendation,” and Prizzia replied, “You know. I’m gonna go with the flow.”
Stormwater
In her June 14 budget presentation, Lieberman recommended an increase of $10 per equivalent residential unit (4,011 square feet of impervious area) in the stormwater fee. Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler made a motion to adopt staff’s recommendation, and Chestnut seconded the motion. In response to a question from Prizzia, Lieberman said the increase is needed to cover salary increases.
Prizzia said, “We need to do more about stormwater than just fees and just thinking about big holes in the ground. I think we’re seeing more and more, as climate change happens, the flooding that’s really happening with intensifying rain storms and increased impervious surfaces, and I think our Vulnerability Analysis and our upcoming Climate Action Plan is going to be a really important process and opportunity for us to begin to delve into the policies and decision-making around that, including things like changing our requirements around impervious surfaces and things like that.”
The board voted 4-0 to approve the stormwater fee increase.
Solid waste assessment
The solid waste increases vary based on container sizes and other factors and can be found in the table below.
Chestnut made a motion to accept staff’s recommendation, and Chestnut and Wheeler both seconded it. The board voted 4-0 in favor of the motion.
Fire assessment
Lieberman did not recommend an increase in the fire assessment fee in her budget presentation. Cornell made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation, and Chestnut seconded it. The board voted 4-0 in favor of the motion.
Prizzia is so out of touch with what is going on! After opening mouth and inserting foot, she is going with the flow!
Her focus is getting the Butcher Shop approved for her handlers! Cha Ching! The others vote for whatever motion they heard last!
Too bad she and her flow can’t be washed down the sewer drain.
Climate change my ass.
The priorities of wannabe career politicians and their golden NGO parachutes are bankrupting America’s middle class. Their doomsday climate cult is a ruse to “talk about the weather” like that’ll keep them in power long term.
Climate change is how Hanrahan ruined GRU. They don’t need to be implementing UN agenda here locally. F the WHO, the WEF, masks, Vax passports, and the great reset. No global one world totalitarianism here. No digital $!
Covid was “the big lie”!
Prizzia is out of touch with reality.
Her priorities are out of whack and aren’t important to those of us who actually have to work to pay for our priorities.
Similar to, ‘I try to diet but I’m always in the bakery & can’t resist eating ALL those jelly donuts.’
Never met a politician who didn’t love a tax increase.
As far as the solid waste goes, maybe the BOCC could make whoever the contractor is at the time, actually make scheduled pickups. In our part of the County, GFL misses more often than not and sometimes takes THREE WEEKS to make the next pickup. And for this abysmal service, they want to increase rates.
My tax bill seems to go up with every BOCC tax cut. Now I wish I had taken that kabuki math course so I could understand how this works.
Instead of raising your taxes they raise the property assessment instead. Sometimes they do both.
“I like to try to cut taxes, but we’ve got a lot of priorities”
Apparently taxpayers aren’t one of them.
Fix the damn roads!!!
Meanwhile, the vote was 4-0 with Alford absent.
Climate change?
“…Nearly all actively publishing climate scientists say humans are causing climate change.[4][5]…National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed current scientific opinion on global warming. These assessments are generally consistent with the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…..No scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from any of these main points. The last national or international scientific body to drop dissent was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists,[31] which in 2007[32] updated its statement to its current non-committal position.[33}….Since 2001, 34 national science academies, three regional academies, and both the international InterAcademy Council and International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences have made formal declarations confirming human induced global warming and urging nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases…..American Association for the Advancement of Science as the world’s largest general scientific society, adopted an official statement on climate change in 2006:[63]
“The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. … The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now”…A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) reviewed publication and citation data for 1,372 climate researchers and drew the following two conclusions:[145]
“(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers…..””
Article with extensive notes as well as listings of the scientific associations – all of them – agreeing with the IPCC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus_on_climate_change
But hey, they’re probably all wrong or grifters, right?
Man Made Climate Change is garbage. It has been shown multiple time that they are changing data to fit their theory.
https://science.house.gov/2017/2/former-noaa-scientist-confirms-colleagues-manipulated-climate-records
“According to Dr. John Bates, the recently retired principal scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the Karl study was used “to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.””
Nice try and typical cherry picking by your handlers out of the thousands of papers, scientists, and data points and hundreds of scientific associations confirming the climate change consensus.
“Tuesday, in an interview with E&E News, Bates himself downplayed any suggestion of misconduct. “The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” he told reporter Scott Waldman. And Bates told Science Insider that he is wary of his critique becoming a talking point for those skeptical of human-caused climate change….”
https://www.science.org/content/article/how-culture-clash-noaa-led-flap-over-high-profile-warming-pause-study
If you’re so concerned about climate change than Gainesville needs to stop burning wood for energy. Instead of decreasing CO2 we’ve increased it instead when we built the 100 MW wood burner.
It wasn’t my decision Fred.
You should help more…stop braying.
You should try writing a coherent argument, or stay on the porch.
Not an argument. A simple statement in the quest to save humanity from the perils of it’s impact on the environment.
The point everyone is missing is the world has been destroyed two times 1 by fire 2nd by water a when God is ready for the 3rd time no one can stop it so why worry about climate change
The global weather was worse BEFORE fossil fuels, and during the Great Depression when factories were shut. Sea levels are NOT accelerating up or down, neither.
Jeff, we don’t care what the weather was prior to humans inhabiting earth and flourishing. We’ve been here for less than an hour of the metaphorical year the earth has existed. We should care how changes will affect our civilization, including the lives of 7+ billion humans, established political borders, arable lands and where they occur, and cities built near water – almost all of them.
“- Global average sea level has risen 8–9 inches (21–24 centimeters) since 1880.
– If we are able to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, U.S. sea level in 2100 is projected to be around 0.6 meters (2 feet) higher on average than it was in 2000.
– On a pathway with high greenhouse gas emissions and rapid ice sheet collapse, models project that average sea level rise for the contiguous United States could be 2.2 meters (7.2 feet) by 2100 and 3.9 meters (13 feet) by 2150.”
NOAA: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level
I and many many many others don’t give a $hit. I’m not changing my life for you lunatics. Period.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Some have been saying it for quite a while now, if they don’t get money from you one way they’ll find another.
Seems their skulls are the impervious surfaces unwilling to accept their policies are a leading, if not the leading cause of homelessness and housing unaffordability.
The “big holes in the ground” are from your sprawl not “climate change”. This is Florida, we have sink holes dummy!
Say what?
The storm water fee is a crock of BS as the county does nothing for my storm water as I live on a State Road and when it rains my driveway looks like a river
All witch doctors believe in witchcraft, Jazzman. Priorities = crazy costs.
ROLL BACK THE DARN RATE AND CUT TAXES!! WE CAN’T AFFORD IT.
Too many climate scientists are clandestinely funded by biased corporations. Thus these “scientists”, while usually fairly well educated, are victimized by a bit too much corporate Special High Intensity Training. Corporations that hold the patents on air conditioning refrigerants regularly spread propaganda that these refrigerants are either destroying the ozone layer or causing greenhouse effects. They promote this propaganda when the patents are about to expire and they need to maintain profits by peddling another new overpriced refrigerant. Florida is on its way to becoming uninhabitable due to the cost of air conditioning. A/C refrigerant has gone up over 400% in just over a year, largely due to unnecessary corporate funded hysteria. Has your residential A/C unit been re-charged lately? How does $115 a pound for R 410a refrigerant sound when it should cost only about $5 a pound? There are homeowners out there paying over $1500 just to have their A/C re-charged after fixing a minor leak. Many homeowners can no longer afford central air conditioning because of outrageous repair bills. Add to that the outrageous GRU bills for electricity and the extortionate bills for homeowners insurance and it all indicates that we are heading for a big crash with the total destruction of the middle class. Do the climate change fanatics care about that? Years ago R12 Freon refrigerant was outlawed for cars because it allegedly damaged the ozone layer. Any car A/C tech knew that Freon was heavier than air and settled down near the shop floor. So how did it magically float up and attack the ozone layer? It didn’t. It was all a lot of bull crap. More profits were assured by forcing the conversion from R12 to R 134a in cars. Now they are claiming that R134a in cars and R 410a for homes (which replaced the superior R22 for homes) are “greenhouse gases” and must be replaced at a huge cost to consumers. All bull crap. Every “cause” in America has gravitated down to a corporate financed swindle to screw the consumer out of every last penny, with whore politicians in on the big con.
Priorities aside, she’s a good looking bird for her age.
Oh great, Joey sez we have a “CILF.”
I grew up in a place where the entire area was under several hundred feet of ice, TWICE. The glaciers melted because of evil white Americans those two times, 10,000 plus years ago. Oh, no machines or cars? How did they melt and so quickly? Climate is always changing, people don’t control the universe, very proud and presumptive to think we do and can modify it to suit us. Abuse things we have, no, never said that, be good stewards of the land and resources, but for crying in the beer, we are not more powerful than God, or even “nature.” Taxing people for this reason is just another feature of ultra leftists wanting control of more of our lives. 1974 Time printed the “coming of the next Ice Age, that didn’t frighten anyone, Global warming with red graphics did some, but things cooled for a while, so the catch all “Climate Change” became the mantra of leftist religion. It was a politically smart move I admit. Cold in the extreme, climate is changing, hot weather, climate is changing. The local weekend weather guy on a certain TV station has gone from calling the AVERAGE temperature to saying it is NORMAL. An above average day is not above NORMAL, it is a little above the average for the last 100 years ago or however long we could track temperature. What was the temperature in 1300 in Florida? It is warm, the climate changes, but we do not control it, either way. Stop taking my money for this and pissing it away on your pet boondoggles.
Experts have squandered the trust we had in them.
The studies used to support expert intervention through increased taxes/fees, restrictions on use of products that contribute to human thriving (like gas stoves, gasoline powered engines and air conditioners) and restrictions on liberties (such as medical freedom to decide what medications to take or not take), are often funded by grants from either government agencies with an agenda (more control), or industries with an agenda (more profit).
We don’t trust these experts any longer. We are suspicious of your conclusions, because we are suspicious of your motivations.
Why are the “recommendations” always in the direction of less freedom and more cost?
The studies that claim to be conducted for our good seem instead to be a form of propaganda designed to convince just enough of us to go along with the not-so-slow march through the institutions and encroachments on our liberties (including the freedom to rear our own children as we see fit).
We need to question the premise and think for ourselves. Even well-meaning experts are caught in the funding net.
I am thankful for our Governor and his team, pushing back on the meddling expert class on our behalf.
Sure Concerned, you can just believe whatever you want and the hell with the science that has most of our babies living to their 70s, has us flying across the country in 5 hours, and driving huge pick-up trucks that get 26 mpg to the grocery to pick-up food from around the hemisphere and yet is still safe. Those “experts” just got lucky I guess and we could have done the same with prayer.
Ignorance is bliss.
I’m very much in favor of real science, which asks lots of questions and follows the evidence, wherever it leads.
I don’t trust the modern version of so-called science, which funds and designs studies to reach a pre-determined conclusion, like the reprehensible COVID “science” that forced very lucrative medications on the masses, enriching the pharma industry and their influential friends high up in government, like Dr. Fauci.
The same studies that isolated dying patients, refusing to let them try medications that weren’t approved by the favored experts peddling the expensive patented new medicines. The same studies that limited freedom of movement and were relied upon to censor dissenters.
THAT is the science I do not trust. I have been praying for wisdom and deliverance throughout this terrible ordeal, brought to us by the meddling, greedy, oppressive expert class.
Jazzy , I gotta know, do you believe in and support
fully electric cars?
The president of Standford University just had to resign over a scandal involving deliberately manipulated research papers. See https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/stanford-president-resigns-over-manipulated-research-will-retract-at-least-3-papers/ I personally do not trust any so-called scientific papers because there is too much potential for outside influence from people and corporations that have an agenda. The whole climate change argument is a hoax. Climate has always changed on this planet with no connection to the influence of humans. The climate change hoax makes it possible for America’s huge corps of swindlers to make more money selling carbon credits. As for Alachua County, it is dominated by hysterical busybodies. Consider the county’s intent now to stick their nose into what kind of dwelling you can rent. The county has to inspect your air conditioning equipment to ensure efficiency. An A/C service company must clean your outside condenser unit. Your refrigerator may not meet their efficiency standards. Just wait until they completely outlaw R410a refrigerant and you must buy new equipment to meet their standards. There goes another 12 grand out the door to satisfy the climate change nuts. And another 2 or 3 grand for a new refrigerator. Concerning R410a refrigerant, it operates at much higher pressures than the previous more efficient R22. More pressure, more leaks. More service calls. More money out of your pocket. And it goes on and on until you are dead broke and living on the streets.
Taxpayers are the least of this Wokesters Priorities. No consideration for our wallets . What a pious hack. Who’s single member district will the Marine Biology major be in ? To hell with her packing plant.