Housing Headaches
      "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
      That was the war cry of actor Peter Finch in his "Network" film role as a TV newscaster as he urged fictional viewers to protest "business as usual."
       An organized mass protest may be worth thinking about since nothing else seems to convince the so-called representatives of the people in Tallahassee and Washington to do something about the financial lynching of property owners.
       Take the case of one of my neighbors. Her mother had lived a block away from her, paying about $1,900 a year in taxes on a homesteaded house. When the mother died in December 2006, the property went to an estate of four siblings, including my neighbor.
       In January 2007, Pinellas County gave the heirs something else -- notice that they would inherit a new tax bill along with the property. The new tab: $8,800.
        Why nearly $6,000 more? For two reasons, says a Pinellas County spokesperson. First, homes lose their homestead tax break on the death of an owner. Second, the outrageously higher tax was based on the average sales price of similar homes in the neighborhood during the previous year.
       The four heirs have homes of their own, so they won't be moving into their late mother's house. However, it's up to them to shoulder its upkeep. Besides repairs, this includes paying for trash pickup, and water and sewer costs on property where no water is used and neither sewage nor garbage is generated.
      Of course, there's also the property tax of $8,800, a bill calculated without an actual assessment or a sale. This and the other costs must continue to be paid until the property is sold in a local real estate market that has been, and is expected to continue being, depressed for many months to come. Unless the market improves, the heirs will continue to inherit only economically draining bills.
       This is only one example of the inept management of federal, state, county and municipal government. There ought to be a law. One that defines governmental "criminal management."
        Don't we deserve more for out tax dollars? Or do we have to get "mad as hell" and " not take it anymore."     

Tom Stella (April 2008)

Email Tom Stella at: blogs@gulfbeachrecord.com.