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Ocala
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Ocala resident discusses high road costs, property taxes

To the Editor:

Concerning the letter writer who wants to stop paying property taxes to be able to pay for a road assessment: I hope you know that if you don’t pay that tax, you will suffer “forfeiture of property.” I’ve learned more about these two subjects in the last year than I wanted to, but looked into it when we received a road assessment of $4,000 ($5,000 with interest).

The formula I was given by the property appraiser is that County residents pay 16% tax rate and City residents pay 19%. On a comparison basis, that means that on a $100,000 home, City people pay about $300 more in yearly taxes. At the end of a 25-year ‘lifespan’ for a new road, City residents have paid $7,500 more in taxes, so they reason that County people should pay for their roads in full.

I question that formula. City residents’ taxes are also used by the City Council to pay things like lawsuits (over fire fees, arresting homeless people, etc.). Why are their taxes used to pay 100% of road costs (they pay nothing) but County residents pay 100% of road costs, with no tax monies applied?

I will be requesting the Marion County Board of County Commissioners to stop attaching these extremely high road costs to our property taxes (nearly doubling that tax and the risk of forfeiture), and go back to the previous collection method they used before, back in the early 1980’s. When they started attaching RA’s to property tax bills back then, that’s when “forfeiture of property due to non payment of property taxes” started skyrocketing to the point that the Florida legislators created four legal amendments (1992-2012) to protect low-income seniors from this diabolical plot to take our homes more easily. Take from the poor and sell it to the rich. So wrong.

Joy Rumans
Ocala

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