(above) Manicured Miami Beach can be a high maintenance woman.

It’s a bit of a vicious circle: people are unable to afford their mortgage payments, so their homes are foreclosed, causing property values to plummet.  As the value plummets, the city loses tax revenue.  As it loses the tax revenue, it starts raising municipal fees on everything in sight, further bankrupting a public that’s already stretched to the gills.

THE DOWNSIDE OF NO STATE INCOME TAX

Among its many draws is the fact that Florida is among a handful of states nationwide that have no state (or city) income tax.  Money for social services and municipal funding must consequently come from other sources: property taxes, resort fees (think Disney and Universal, for example), utility taxes (those electric bills are high for a reason and it ain’t just the heat), and road tolls are the main sources of income for the state and its cities.

Taxes paid to the city account for one third of a property tax bill.  The other 2/3 goes to Miami-Dade county and the public school system.

However, the recent financial crisis has deprived cities of their share of the property taxes.  Therefore, they, along with the county and the public school system, have been forced to seek their revenue elsewhere.

“READ MY LIPS…”

One way, of course, to compensate for the lost revenue would be to raise property taxes, but Thursday the city of Miami proudly proclaimed that it would have none of that—and as a result, homeowners will be paying less in property taxes this year.

Then came the bad news: they would raise the needed revenue by cutting jobs, slashing services, and raising the cost of those services that made the cut by about 5%.

Services like bulk garbage pick-up and Neighborhood Enhancement Team offices will be scaled back.

The West Miami Commission, in a similar predicament, has announced its plan to increase water fees by 15%, as well as a $120/year garbage fee hike.

For its part, the Miami Beach city commission also plans to keep the tax rate flat, but will be cutting about 89 positions (40 of them vacant), raising water and sewerage rates, and dramatically raising the fees for lobbyists, whose yearly registration will soar from $125 to $500 and non-profit vendors’ registration, which will rise from $15 to $135.

HOW WILL IT AFFECT YOU?

Expect any kind of municipal fee or permit to rise, from the amount of your monthly storm water bill too the cost of parking.  Case in point: metered parking north of 23rd street will go up from fifty cents an hour to $1 an hour, affecting some 1500 spaces.

And you can also expect a more vigilant police force and more frequent citations: if you run a red light in Miami Beach, you may be photographed by one of the many new traffic cameras and assessed a $125 fine.

For those of you who work for the city, you may find that your position is one of the 59 eliminated.  The city estimates that 50% will be unable to find other positions in city government.

NO TAXES, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE

Many scoffed at the idea of eliminating Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy during last year’s presidential elections.  Some said allowing tax rebates for the poor was tantamount to socialism.  Penalizing a wealthy person for being successful while rewarding a less fortunate person with better social services or a lower tax burden, they claimed, represented a Marxist spreading of the wealth.  But I was skeptical.  Don’t we already do that elsewhere in our system? For example, I don’t have any kids, but my taxes help pay for the public education of those who do.  I’m a safe driver, but my tax dollars pay the officers to respond to other people’s traffic accidents and for ambulances to take them to the hospital.  If they’re uninsured, those dollars come out of my pocket in the form of higher health care costs.  To some degree, it’s inevitable in any society that some will have to contribute to the benefit of others.

Maybe the hard reality is that we don’t live in a bubble: the well-being of the best of us is dependent on the well-being of the least of us.

Unfortunately, those left holding the bag when we don’t increase taxes, are often those least able to afford it.

Douglas Eames is a freelance writer, homespun philosopher and budget bon vivant who divides his time between Southern California and South Beach. Doug’s column appears Fridays at Miami Beach 411. See more articles by Doug >