Email - taxes

Our sincere apologies to the writer (?) of the email below. It was possibly our fault along with our software house in Australia that monitors all of our incoming email for viruses, worms, or bad HTML tags. I had NO idea of this until a couple of days ago, when a list of those emails was sent for review, and your email was discovered on the list.

I then can by-pass the hold placed on them, and allow them to enter our email system. This is exactly what happened in this case. I wish it had been caught before the dates mentioned in the letter, but it's contents are valuable and we will pass them on to the readers of our site for them to judge.

In the many years of this web site being available to our internet visitors, never has one come through so clearly thought out with ACTUAL FACTS & FIGURES such of which we have published so many times. The person, who wrote, and sent us this email, has substance to all contained in each, and word they wrote. It is as if it came from listening to years of tapes, and reading the years of documents we have contained in our files.

We have published many of our visitors emails over the years, some still on the web site, because of what has been considered to be the TRUTH. More so than the documents produced, and sometimes copied for reference to point out flaws, by the City of Winter Springs. The TRUTH lies in what IS NOT in those City documents.

The below email is a true rendition of what the City, and the Mayor IS NOT telling, or producing with your tax money. That in itself is not only a shame, but a sham, which shows the extent of what the City of Winter Springs is trying to hide with all their conflicting stories and documents!

The below email is in it's original format, and has not been edited by PFGG.

Dear PFGG,

Included in my U.S. mail the other day was a letter from Winter Springs Mayor Bush explaining how our tax millage rate probably won’t go up and that we have the lowest taxes around! You can tell this letter from the mayor was written by Ron McLemore because the city manager is known for leading people by the nose into believing his line of bunk. Why did Mayor Bush fail to mention that he doesn’t even get to vote on the tax millage rate unless he needs to break a tie vote? Is the mayor already expecting some commissioners to be absent? How does he know the inclination of the commission? Are they all talking amongst themselves about how they are going to vote?

Funny though, if what the commission did with the proposed tax millage rate is so usual -- you know the spiel “for planning purposes only” -- then why did it have to waste taxpayers’ money by mailing out the mayor’s letter to every citizen to explain that the commission has NOT done anything out of the ordinary?

What’s this garbage that the commission “unfortunately did not have time to give proper consideration to these proposed improvements”? This means whatever the improvements are they are not part of any written plan. Did it ever occur to the commission that instead of scaring taxpayers with the proposed millage rate, that it should have instead scared McLemore for not doing his job and then vote not to propose such a high millage rate?

As usual, they played right into McLemore’s hands. Now the commission is doing heavy political back peddling because of their obvious stupidity.

The “mayor’s letter” says our current millage is 4.550. Really, the tax millage rate is 4.300 with an extra .2500 millage for the bond issue voters approved to expand Central Winds Park a few years ago. In fact, these two different millages are listed separately on everyone’s proposed tax bills.

It’s a little know fact that when the commission voted to set the proposed millage at 8.0000 a few weeks back, they also voted the same night to reduce the bond debt millage from .2500 to .1374. So, the mayor has lied in his letter. The overall tax millage rate should drop from the current 4.550 (4.300 plus .2500 bond debt) to 4.4740 (4.300 plus .1374 bond debt) for 2005. Now, here is where that “minimal increase” that the mayor mentioned at the end of his letter comes in to play.

Taxpayers are not supposed to notice this, but the voter approved bond debt millage for the Central Winds expansion is becoming a permanent source of taxation as the commission slowly sneaks fractions of that bond debt millage into the regular tax millage. This underhanded way of keeping the “overall millage the same” lets the city instantly keep the extra $11.26 for every $100,000 of accessed value by taking a voter approved millage, which was supposed to end at some point in time, and make it a source of tax revenue for perpetuity.

Well, that diversion of tax millage (.1126) adds up fast especially with higher property values. The commission knows this and so does McLemore. That is why there is absolutely nothing mentioned about reducing the voter approved bond debt millage from .2500 to .1174 in the mayor’s letter.

Here is a tip for taxpayers, when the commission wants you to vote “Yes” to bond yourself for a $6 million swimming pool at Central Winds Park in 2006 or 2007, you better vote “No”. Bond referendums are the commission and McLemore’s way of writing permanent pork into your tax bill forever.

Mr. Scott, I hope you can get this word out fast. The mayor, the commission, and the city manager are willfully deceiving taxpayers in this letter. Just read between the lines when you see words in the mayor’s letter like “highly unlikely”, “I don’t think”, “additional service improvements”, “financing alternatives”, “it doesn’t appear”, or “minimal increases”. These are indefinite words being used for a definite purpose.

The only reason why the mayor’s letter was sent was so Mayor Bush, the commission, and McLemore can head off an angry mob at city hall. I hope taxpayers don’t fall for it. They need to get to city hall on September 12^th and 26^th at 6:30 pm to speak their minds and to get to the bottom of this deception.

Thank you for your website. It allows the truth to be revealed and the lies from city hall to be unraveled. Please post this email anonymously.

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