Guest Column: Stop threatening to reduce services

Randy Covington

Once again, the county Administrator is threatening reductions in services if you do not give him more of your money. They are threatening to cut parks and recreation and libraries and the things they know are closest to you because they have a short term problem and only seem able to rely on cynical methods of manipulation to solve their problems at the expense of the greater community.

What the Administration wants is an increase in taxes, one that will hurt the most vulnerable in our county…in perpetuity, for what is a short term problem. The administration is desperate to rush you into imposing a new tax burden on those least able to afford it to solve its pressing needs for funds for road maintenance and transportation needs. This is a problem that resolves itself with a return to more normal economic growth. A path the county is already on according to Mr. Wanchick’s own presentation.

From the depths of the housing collapse, the pace of construction has now risen back to a more normal level of approximately 3% annual growth. This, along with increase in property values (check you assessment this year, mine was up around 10%) and coupled with the tax increase base on the Commission keeping the millage at last year’s rate instead of adopting the roll back rate,(yes they raised your taxes this year) they raised taxes this year and in 2011 and 2009 and 2006. With a little more patience, we will start to see revenues increase to the county coffers in a manner that will start to give us leeway to address the many issues we face.

The Administrator seems in a great rush to try to get this on the ballot, seemingly for the April 27th Special election. That is because they know, as the economy improves, their case starts to fall apart. They also know, sense the last time they tried to have you vote in a tax increase, they need this to occur in an election where almost no one shows up, so only the special interests expected to benefit most from the added tax burden on you shows up to vote.

Since 2007, the county has spent millions for facilities it could have found far less costly solutions to, cases in point:

• The County Administration building – $ 16.0 million dollars.
• Millions in improvements to the Equestrian Center.
• Millions to acquire and renovate the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall. Several hundred thousand dollars on top of that to subsidize the losses on the operations of the facility.
• Over $1.0 million as their share to acquire the old Fiddlers Green restaurant which was never worth the $5.0 million dollar purchase price. This was a corrupt deal all the way through. Either someone lined their pocket, or the most incompetent people in the world were involved at both the state and county level.
• The HHS Building – $14.0 million dollars to house state employees rent free when a $ 4.0 million dollar retrofit was possible.
• Public Works Building – $ 12.0 (projected). While this might be a need, it is not absolutely necessary this year.
• The new fire Station in Nocatee, which they tried to convince you was being paid for by the developer – it was not.
• County Parks, $4.0 million dollars alone for the most recent park of King Street. Two other county parks cost almost $ 20.0 million dollars combined, just two parks. More corruption with people lining their pockets and the most incompetent people in the world designing and managing the construction on the county’s behalf. The actual total under this category alone may be in excess of $40 million dollars since 2005.

Add to that the millions of dollars in subsidies for boondoggles and money losers:

• The Amphitheater after acquiring it in 2002, the county then spent 4 years and over $8.7 million dollars to renovate a…tent. Since then, they have spent millions to subsidize the annual losses.
• The Golf Course. With over $10 million dollars spent to acquire it and subsidize all the losses there since they bought it, they decided, because of all the bad press on it, to take $ 1.25 million dollars from reserves and “bail in” the taxpayers so they can eliminate the debt payments to TRY to make the thing break even. How many of you would love to have the government buy all the necessary operating assets for you to operate a business so you can break even without having to make your operations pay for the investment?
• The Harvest of Hope Punk Rock Festival, Cash for Punkers. If you ever dreamed of being a rock concert promoter, take heart, if you live in St. Johns County, clowns from the recreation department lost over $ 300,000 of taxpayer money, spending your money against county policy. Of course they were never held accountable, they were just slowly shuffled out to make it look as they were just moving on.
• The PVB Concert Hall. A venue that seats about 300. Ask anyone in the Entertainment business if you can make a venues such as this pay for its own operations. The entitled who love it will tell you it is critical to the “quality of life”.

Now, you the taxpayer, of course, must rush to provide a permanent tax increase all without adequate time and information…all so the administration will get access to over $200 million dollars to be able to spend it freely on boondoggles just like these.

It is a reality that we live in different times. Our ability to recover the cost of development has been radically re-ordered in the last few years by the court and state law. Growth is a necessary thing for a healthy community, we are facing serious decisions in how we will pay for the infrastructure that is needed, and arguably some shared responsibility of the citizens, to facilitate the necessary growth and no one in the Administration has even begun to engage us in discussing what the implications are and what the possible range of solutions are that we must consider to take us into the next twenty five years of the flowering of St. Johns County.

Quality of life is the responsibility of each of us as individuals, not government. The proper role of government is to try to craft a vision of what the future of a community is, engage the community in creating that vision and seek an open and transparent and coalescing of the community’s ability, willingness and desire to move toward that vision. Any attempt t0 scare you into making an ill-considered decision, on a fix that has proven, based on the Commissions track record over the last eight years, does not move us towards a greater vision of the future, cheats you, me and our families of the potential and right to build a life in accordance with our own hopes, dreams and abilities.

Just constantly seeking to impose taxes for the ephemeral goal of improving the “quality of life” fails to actually take us in that direction and ends up as nothing more than a redistribution of wealth, in this case from the most vulnerable among us, to those better able to provide their own realization of their dreams. That is not improving the “quality of life” it is just shuffling the deck, at the expense of the most vulnerable.

We should demand the county stop fear-mongering on this issue and bring us a full accounting of what they want the money for. There are many options we have as a community in imposing a sales tax on ourselves. These include earmarked funding for specific projects and a sunset provision to end the tax once the goals of the tax have been achieved. For instance, we could pass a tax, for ten years, to raise a specific amount of money for a very specific list of needs and then the tax would end. We also have the option of imposing a less than 1% sales tax. Without a full, open, transparent process to specify, and plan what the money will used for will only ensure a continuation of the waste that we have seen from this administrator’s stewardship.

This administrator refuses to even consider that offloading management of certain of these facilities to private management companies might actually turn them into “community assets” That is what he calls them and he unabashedly stated these are most often ”money losers”. He sees them as perks to hand out to people that keep him entrenched. This is one very arrogant administrator who has no concept of his place.

The Administration is trying to get you to swallow their dire message and threats and intimidation without providing you the full range of information and options they owe you and you should demand before they send you an ill-considered measure to vote on. Just why are they trying to rush this through on the February 17th agenda? What are they really up to?

They have lost every time they have tried this before. It is time they take a breath, and do the hard work of crafting a viable and well-crafted plan before seeking your approval. To impose a sales tax increase in St. Johns County. The real questions the Commission should ask of Mr. Wanchick is what is the rush? Where is the plan? Until they have these answers, they should decline to consider adding such a measure to the ballot.