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Article
Courtesy of The Sun Sentinel
By Marci
Shatzman
Published
October 22, 2006
Dorothy
Waxman has been a Realtor for 35 years, so she can't believe it took her a
couple of years to figure out she's paying three times the property taxes of
her Cascade Lakes neighbors, who are full-time residents.
She hasn't gotten her tax bill but figures she'll be paying about $6,200 for
her 1,650-square-foot, two-bedroom home, the smallest model in the adult
development west of Boynton Beach. This will be her sixth winter in South
Florida, and the first year her taxes were $1,900.
"That's why I bought the house," she said.
Now the Long Island, N.Y., snowbird is frustrated and furious.
She gets a discount at the movies, but she'd rather have her neighbors' taxes,
said Dorothy, who's 65 but still working.
Dorothy and her husband had a small condo in Fort Lauderdale when their
children were small, so they bought a house in Cascade Lakes when he developed
emphysema and couldn't tolerate the cold weather. They come down about four
months a year and are arriving after Thanksgiving. Her laptop allows her to
keep on top of her listings. "I just take my office to Florida," she
said.
They can't move down full time because of a grandchild who needs their
attention. As residents of Port Washington, N.Y., they're not entitled to
Florida's homestead exemption or the 3 percent annual cap on property tax
hikes.
Dorothy calls that taxation without representation and likes to mention the
Boston Tea Party.
"The lady who sold me my house didn't tell me my taxes would triple. It's
not fair, and something has to be done about it," she said.
Dorothy wrote Gov. Jeb Bush and got a response from Tiffany McClellan in his
office. "There are several inequities in our property tax structure,
which have become more apparent in recent years," McClellan said in her
e-mail.
McClellan told Dorothy that Bush has appointed a 15-member Florida Property
Tax Reform Committee to look into the matter. The only Palm Beach County
member is Dennis Nelson of Wellington, a Realtor from the Keyes Company. The
Web site at www.propertytaxreform.state.fl.us
says the committee has a December deadline to file its first report, and
the final one by December 2007.
But if you ask Jan Bergemann, a statewide housing activist as president of
Cyber Citizens for Justice Inc., the snowbirds have to organize to make their
case heard. Even if they don't have the power of the vote to get the ear of
the politicians, they have the power of the almighty dollar, he said. Whole
sections of the economy depend on them, he said.
"Their recourse is to take 100 people and bang on the doors of their
legislators until they listen," he said. "If they go one by one,
they just shake their hand. That's politics."
But Dorothy doesn't see that happening, even though she has friends in the
Cascades, Coral Lakes, Banyan Springs, all snowbirds who feel helpless and
hopeless. Nobody's moving out yet, but friends who are retiring are moving to
Arizona and the Carolinas instead of Florida, she said.
Jan said some lower-income snowbirds are already in trouble between taxes and
the higher insurance premiums. They can't sell their condos in the depressed
real estate market, and the foreclosure rate is going up, he said.
Dorothy is staying for now but is considering moving into a less expensive
house in Banyan Springs. She likes to go online to see the tax rate for
full-time residents in Cascade Lakes.
"My neighbors are paying $2,400 for the same house. Everything should be
equalized," she said.
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