Why I Opposed the City of Gainesville Special Assessment for Fire Services
By Zana Dupee, Esq.
Bogin, Munns & Munns, P.A.
(352) 332-7688
There are 3 reasons that I opposed the City of Gainesville Special Assessment for Fire Services:
1. The Special Assessment is unnecessary. Fire services should continue to be funded by ad valorum taxation.
2. The Proposed Special Assessment does NOT fairly and reasonably apportion fire costs among the property owners in Gainesville and would be subject to legal attack.
3. There is a specific statutory legal basis for exempting churches and non-profits from Special Assessments.
As to the first argument that the Special Assessment is unnecessary, I reject the contention that the Special Assessment is even needed. Tax revenues have increased at healthy levels over the past several years and are still increasing. There is simply not a convincing economic case that these proposed Special Assessments are needed during these lean economic times. The citizens would appreciate the city cutting the budget further rather than imposing unnecessary special assessments.
Additionally, as the city commission themselves have pointed out, the city has the ability and authority to increase ad valorum taxation if such revenue is truly needed.
Implementing an additional, unnecessary special assessment to pay for fire services when the city can already raise any necessary funds via ad valorum taxation simply starts us down the SLIPPERY SLOPE of more and more taxes and government assessments. And unlike ad valorum taxes, there are NO statutory CAPS on special assessments. This would simply open a Pandora's box of special assessments that could be increased at will. The current proposal is to fund approximately 30% of the fire services budget via the Special Assessment. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to extrapolate that this assessment has the potential to TRIPLE even without taking into account inflation over time regarding the cost of fire services.
As to the second argument that the Special Assessment is NOT fairly and reasonably apportioning fire costs among the property owners in Gainesville. The city's consultants have come up with a scheme based on property type. They have tried to argue that this is logical because these categories are used by the Department of Revenue for taxation purposes. However, as the city attorney pointed out, this is NOT a TAX proposal, it is a Special Assessment for Fire Services. Categories that are logical for taxation purposes are not necessarily a logical way to analyze fire usage.
The city's proposed categories are
1. residential
2. commercial
3. industrial
4. institutional
The categories themselves are arbitrary when you analyze fire usage.
Logical categories for fire usage would be
1. masonry v. frame construction
2. distance from fire hydrants
3. presence v. lack of fire suppression systems
These are the types of categories used by fire insurance companies, not the arbitrary tax classifications proposed by the City of Gainesville.
Moreover, the proposed scheme does not fairly apportion the assessments. This scheme unfairly impacts churches and non-profit organizations with larger facilities with no logical relationship to the fire services being provided.
What % of fire services are being utilized by churches? less than 3.35% -- based on the city's data presented tonight.
Yet, the proposed assessment on churches is 6 cents per sq. ft. Meanwhile, commercial buildings are utilizing 18% of fire services and their proposed assessment is ONLY 4 cents per sq. ft. How is that a logical apportionment?
Moreover, the city's methodology to determine how much fire services are being used by which properties only takes into account first response and NOT actual services provided. The analysis was simply based on call/incident data. The analysis was not based on actual COSTS.
Thus, this proposal is subject to legal attack for not being logical and NOT fairly and reasonably apportioning the assessment among various types of properties in the city.
As to the third argument that there is a LEGAL basis for exempting churches and non-profit organizations, I was SHOCKED to hear City Attorney Radson say that he had "searched FAR AND WIDE" and could find no legal authority for the city to exempt churches from Special Assessments. We heard during the consultant's presentation that there is a long list of Florida municipalities that exempt churches and non-profit organizations from paying special assessment for fire services, and the consultant even went on to say that there have been NO challenges in court for exemptions for churches and non-profits.
WHY IS THAT?
That is because there IS a Florida statute that specifically addresses the issue of whether a municipality may legally exempt churches and non-profit organizations from special assessments. It is Florida Statute 170.201(2), which reads:
(2) Property owned or occupied by a religious institution and used as a place of worship or education; by a public or private elementary, middle, or high school; or by a governmentally financed, insured, or subsidized housing facility that is used primarily for persons who are elderly or disabled shall be exempt from any special assessment levied by a municipality to fund any service if the municipality so desires.
I am happy to report that after I made the above arguments to the commission tonight in addition to 36 other residents speaking out against the proposed Special Assessment for Fire Services, the city commission voted unanimously to oppose implementing the Special Assessment.
