Quote:
Originally Posted by huge-pigeons
All of your info is wrong about these increases. Every villager would be happy to pay the $130 increase for firefighters/emu’s. The problems were that they were going to gouge every retailer here by many thousands of $$$ per year, which would have increased the cost of doing business here by quite a bit. From what I heard, a company like Galaxy would have their tax increase go from $1000 (+ or -) a year to over $12,000 a year. This was the area that people most complained about when it was dropped. We all pay the village tax if we use a company that operates in the villages, this new fee would have just made that tax go up for every villager.
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No, I'm pretty sure my information about these increases is absolutely correct as it came from budget documents, Benesch study documents, and Sumter County tax documents.
The impact to businesses is a complicated issue. Absolutely, the $124 assessment to a commercial rooftop or commercial property would have increased dramatically. But, what is the actual cost to providing fire protection service to the property and who would actually pay it?
Is $124 reasonable for the entirety of the lofts at Brownwood or Grand Traverse plaza? Try thinking about it this way. Let's say $124 is reasonable for my house, my neighbor's house, and the eight other houses on my cul-de-sac. Each of us receives the same services, those services have a cost, and so we each pay $124 (for a total of $1,240 for the street). Now imagine I win the lottery and decide I don't want any neighbors so I purchase all their homes. Further, I don't like the idea of receiving separate tax bills so I legally merge all those properties into one. Now I have a single property with ten rooftops - my own little compound. The fire assessment for that property would now be $124 total. Even though the ten homes still exist and even though they require the same fire protection services the fee is reduced because they are now a single property. That's legal, but is it reasonable?
The Benesch study attempted to calculate fire protection costs and come up with a fee structure that allocated those costs based on utilization. It attempted to fairly allocate the real costs rather than simply charge each property $124 regardless of the fire protection needs. Businesses didn't like the outcome of the study but I didn't read much (any?) criticism of the methodology of the study. Perhaps the study was correct and businesses have been getting a great deal for a long time.
Who would pay for the increased fees on businesses? That depends. If a business owned its land and property then the increases would fall on business profit and could be passed to the customers. There would be a tradeoff that would take into consideration how much profit the business needed to survive and how much cost the customer would be willing to pay. It might be that some businesses simply would not be able to afford the fees and would close. Others would pass the costs to customers who would then stop patronizing that business. It could get ugly.
Inside the Villages there is the same story but with a catch. Inside the Villages there is a landlord. We know prices inside the Villages are higher than outside for most things. We have heard that rents inside the Villages are high though we've been told the rents must not be excessive since businesses keep paying them. But now not only is there the business' profit that could be used to pay the increased fee there is also the landlord's profit. If fees were increased and business' profit decreased or the cost was passed to customers who stopped coming then some storefronts would become vacant. The landlord (the Villages) may determine that they should lower rents rather than see their rent income go to zero. In other words, the "Village tax" may decrease in order to keep businesses in the Villages.
But none of this matters now. The IFD was defeated and a fee restructuring was defeated. Next up - a dependent fire district with taxing authority.