Letter: Vote No on Manatee Sales Tax Proposals

Here is why I will be voting No on both the County and School Board sales tax proposals in Manatee County:

I do not believe either organization has done a good job of managing their current resources. I see wasteful spending in both organizations. In the School Board, millions of dollars showed up missing and were never accounted for.

The value of the properties in Manatee County has increased by over 20% since 2012, along with an increase in the property tax rate. Where did those increases in revenues go?

Have you ever heard a public entity that was taxpayer funded say it had too much revenue? Does anyone really believe our property taxes will go down if the sales tax is increased?

There are always citizen committees established when they want support to increase taxes. Why hasn’t there been any citizen committees created to take a critical look at existing spending and make recommendations for reductions?

Both organizations say they need this additional funding for critical infrastructure needs, yet how can they reconcile this with the fact that neither has collected the full amount of impact fees they were allowed to? Now they want us to pay more in sales tax to cover what they should have been charging in impact fees?

Your readers may be interested to know that of the $298,000 the Forward Manatee PAC has collected to support both sales tax increase proposals, over 80% of this money was donated by companies that either are, or support, the developers in our County.

Until both organizations take real actions to reduce their expenses and put their citizen’s needs ahead of the development community, I will vote No on any additional taxes.

Mike Eiffert

Bradenton, FL 34210