Friday, August 22, 2008

Back to Business as unusual, and yes Fay is still here

I have decided that conversations consisting of our weather are becoming old and to some may be uninteresting.
So I have decided to discuss a unique problem to our Charlotte County Florida, our tax trim bills, which we received today.
These are paper preliminary notices of what our taxes are proposed, more than likely will be for the upcoming year.
Now here's where it becomes different from our local surrounding counties ... even though our homes' values have gone down our taxes have gone up! Huh?
Lee and Collier, and I do believe Sarasota Counties homes have also been depreciated or devalued due to the housing market but they are getting tax breaks, what?

How is this possible?
I'm terribly confused.
Why is Charlotte County the only one that can do this?
And do we have any say in this? Yes, they say we do.

We are also the ones with one of the highest unemployment rates in the state actually second highest and extremely high quantities of foreclosures.

Next week we have a preliminary election on Tuesday, and will the same Representatives be in power to change things?
And how do we know, which are the ones to discuss this with?

So many questions... someone must know how to handle this travesty.
To add insult to injury; we all voted to increase our homestead exemption and it was passed by an unanimous vote in our state to be doubled from 25K to 50K for the upcoming year!
This means that they subtract 50K from the value of our homes and that our taxes should be based on this lower value. This passed for all sixty-seven counties, not just a few.

We need assistance and logic to handle this problem, and as quickly as possible.
Life for some of our residents depends on managing their very tight incomes, us included.

Our costs of living have gone up much more than what bosses, and or Social Security or pensions have been unrealistically doling out in salary increases.

Let's face it; Iraq seems to be doing financially better than most Americans.
Maybe somebody there could explain this to me?

And this is not a facetious question; I really mean it?

Good night, and please think only good for us here in this odd state of controversies.
If it wasn't for the mostly GOOD weather (Nine months of the year, not now; LOL) I would have left long ago.

Which way will the war go?

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