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It’s said that there are only two sure things in life: death and taxes. You can add a third item to that list — that politicians will never advocate for raising taxes.
Well, almost never. I’m beginning to understand that Palmetto Bay Council Member Steve Cody is no ordinary politician.
Cody filed to run against Council Member David Singer at the last minute, showing up at the Village Clerk’s Office with the paperwork for his candidacy just about an hour before qualifying closed, spoiling what Singer thought would be a painless reelection.
It was a contentious race, but, in the end, Cody beat Singer by four points. With that narrow a margin, you’d think that Cody would be playing it safe.
The Palmetto Bay Village Council held a Committee of the Whole meeting last Tuesday night. Rather than stick to a safe subject, Cody came out forcefully, making the case as to why Palmetto Bay must raise taxes on its residents.
Cody told how the prior Council cut the franchise fee in half that FPL pays the Village and how it also lowered the property tax millage rate. All of that was done pre-COVID, but the drop in sales tax collections and added expenses that the Village incurred because the pandemic left Palmetto Bay with a deficit of about $1.6 million last year.
When you add the fact that then Village Manager Ed Silva, then Mayor Gene Flinn, and then Council Member David Singer had the Village pay $3 million from reserves to buy a useless parcel of property of less than an acre from developer Wayne Rosen, it put the town on shaky financial ground.
Cody crunched the numbers. Because the residents of Palmetto Bay demand a high level of service — heightened police presence and one of the best local park systems in South Florida, he noted that cuts in either of these areas were out of bounds. So, too, were cutting staff. The Village has less than 60 full time employees and already 12 percent of the positions are open. A cut in salary and benefits would only drive the town’s workforce to look elsewhere. And the sale of city assets — its park holdings — was also unthinkable.
So, Cody proposed taking the FPL franchise fee back up from 3 percent to 6 percent, the same as charged in every other municipality in Miami-Dade. That would raise an additional $850,000 a year.
What does that mean to the typical Palmetto Bay homeowner? It comes out to around $3 a month, or about a dime a day. As one of the wealthiest enclaves in South Florida, the people of Palmetto Bay can afford to take that minor hit.
Cody also proposed raising property taxes. The Village Council did that last year before Cody was elected and Singer, Flinn, and Vice Mayoral candidate Silva howled in protest. They kept insisting that a rise in property taxes — any rise — could not be tolerated.
Except that they never got into specifics. It turns out that the Village Council raised property taxes on a typical Palmetto Bay home by about $17.50. That’s not per day. That’s not per month. That’s for the entire year — less than 5 cents a day.
Cody proposed that property taxes be raised by about 75 cents a day on a typical home, about 3 cents per hour, or about $275 a year. That would allow the Village to wipe out its deficit and rebuild its reserves within a few years.
Will the other Council Members embrace Cody’s ideas?
Who knows? Three of them, Mayor Karyn Cunningham and Council Members Patrick Fiore and Marsha Matson, are up for reelection in November 2022. That may temper their enthusiasm.
The easy way out would be to ignore the problem or to put the hard choices off on the Village’s new manager, Nick Marano. As a retired Marine colonel, Marano is probably used to taking heavy flak. It is, however, to Cody’s credit that he’s willing to take an unpopular position to solve the financial mess that the former Village officials left the town in.
Former Council Member David Singer has a Facebook Live program that’s broadcast from our studios. I’d be curious as to whether he’s willing to engage in a real debate using real numbers or whether he’s going to just retreat into clichés and slogans.
