I appreciate your reply, GoldWingNut; and I appreciate your videos. Keep up the good work. The map orientations help considerably for context in the newer videos.
A modified Prop 13 (a.k.a. “Prop 2½”) would take years to push through the Florida state process. It will not do anything to stave off an increase of the type(s) being considered / discussed today. What it will do is eliminate consideration of such unreasonable increases in the future, and I predict that the pressure to increase taxes will only increase. Since there is no limitation on tax increase, we will continue to face the problem again and again in the future. Prop 13 / Prop 2½ has many parts, most of which are valuable protection to the taxpayer. One part is the limit of 2½% per year increase of the total property tax paid by a taxpayer unless ratified by the electorate. Since 1978, a period of 41 years, the Prop 2½ has been in operation in the state of California, and California has continued to thrive. Florida offers no such taxpayer protection to its taxpayers; and, without the protection of a Prop 2½, we will be back in this situation again an unpredictable number of times in the future (Proof: We’re here now or we wouldn’t be having this discussion). It only makes sense to limit the taxation powers of the government with a Prop 2½ type legislation. Legislation which can be only produced by the taxpayers through Referendum, since legislatures will never produce this type of legislation on their own.
But, be advised, the Referendum process since its inception in Florida has been made increasingly difficult by the legislators:
“The state’s elected officials have not always been comfortable with the initiative process, and have repeatedly tried to curtail citizen lawmaking. The legislature placed Amendment 3 on the ballot raising the approval requirements to 60 percent for initiated constitutional amendments. With the passage of Amendment 3, Florida became one of only two states in the nation to require a supermajority for constitutional amendments, and the only initiative state with such a requirement. Since then, three initiatives have received majority support, but failed to reach the 60 percent threshold.”
We are in for a struggle to make an initiative law through referendum. But, even with the odds stacked against us, this initiative it should be possible to produce limitation on taxation.
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