Tax Realty Consultant

For a group of Bonita Springs city employees, last Thursday was spent talking about the history of state laws on the communications services taxes, franchise fees and the consequences of property tax law changes.

In those details — talked over with an outside expert at what was called a “revenue enhancement” seminar — the big question of the day was the city’s financial future.

In other words, will there be money, and where will it come from?

The cost of this seminar was $750, not including travel expense for Ken Small, a Tallahassee-based city finance consultant with the Florida League of Cities.

Small, the day’s speaker, went over “every revenue source legally available to the city,” Finance Director Lisa Griggs Roberson said.

But in the end, no mysterious, previously-overlooked revenue source came to light that day.

Much of what Small covered was information Griggs Roberson already knew: that other than occupational license fees — also known as business taxes — and a few other fees, the city has tapped what’s available.

The point of the seminar wasn’t to consider new ways to tax the community, though. The goal, she said, was to be prepared to answer the council’s questions about their options when the city budgeting process begins again next summer.

“Again, it’s just data gathering,” Griggs Roberson said. She said it’s her job to know all the financial possibilities for the city and her job to determine how those changes could affect the city. The revenue source the city taps most heavily right now — property taxes on the city’s $11 billion tax base — is the source where there is the most uncertainty for the future.

While Small gave his assessments of the property tax reform laws and the constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot Jan. 29, Griggs Roberson said she still has no definitive guidance on what the effects of those changes would be.

No guidance has come from the state either, she said.

And while the Florida League of Cities has recently taken a position opposing the property tax amendment that voters will decide in January, she said political considerations played no role in deciding to turn to Small for advice.

Hearing that the city had spent money for an outside take on the city’s financial situation, Ron Pure, a Bonita Springs resident and frequent critic of city expenses, said it seems “foolish” to worry about $750 spent on a seminar.

Compared to the nearly $25,000 six-month contract with a lobbyist, he said, it’s a small expense. At the same time, he said it’s part of a bigger picture of “money going at the door.”

Since the city already pays for membership in the Florida League of Cities, he questioned why there was a cost for the workshop, and he also said he doubted that any outside expertise was necessary.

Griggs Roberson, though, defended the seminar’s value.

“I think it was well worth the cost,” she said.

She pointed to things she had learned from Small, such as that it is possible to start receiving a larger portion of state shared revenues after a city annexes land.

Bonita Springs’ share of money the state collects — a source that amounted to less than $1 million this past year — arrives in monthly sums and is usually based on a state estimate for the city’s population that is set every April.

While this year the financial effect would be small, as the only addition this year was a voluntary annexation in east Bonita that only added a handful of residents to the city’s total population, knowing that it’s possible to ask for a mid-year revision for that estimate could possibly be useful knowledge for the future, she said.

http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/nov/14/finance_consultant_tells_bonita_revenue_sources_ar/?breaking_news

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