As a homeowner in Leon County, I would love to have my homestead property tax exemption raised to $250,000, which Gov. Ron DeSantis’s overall property tax reduction plan would do.
As a citizen of Leon County, I’m terrified of the effect such a reduction would have on the fabric of the community. I’m not the only one. When county commissioners held their first budget workshop in which they tried to come to grips with the fact that more than 70% of the county’s budget is dependent on property taxes, the fear was palpable.
What I write here should not be construed as a criticism of any local or state political leader. Leon County is in a fix, and none of them are responsible for it. One of the purposes of the recent budget workshop was to discuss folding the local arts funding organization (COCA) into the county’s tourist organization, Visit Tallahassee, to focus the local arts scene on tourism, as another way to encourage visitor spending. As I listened to the options, I kept thinking how desperate everyone sounded.
There is virtually no major industry in Leon County, which means that every time a piece of property is rezoned for commercial development, you can hardly catch your breath before the bulldozers rev up.
We were founded as an agricultural county, part of the slave-based “Cotton Kingdom,” before the civil war, which transitioned into a county of hunting plantations afterwords. Preserving and exploiting large pieces of land was part of the culture. Now instead of planting cotton and quail, we’re planting gas stations and Starbucks.
The haste to rezone and build means an almost annual discovery of a lost African-American (often slave) cemetery, which reminds us just how problematic our past can be.
Lonnie Mann of the Panhandle Archaeological Society at Tallahassee, has been agitating the city and county for years to hire a consulting archaeologist to avoid such embarrassments, with no luck. One is tempted to think that local officials are afraid of what an archaeologist might find. And it’s not just cemeteries.
Nearly two years ago, the Tallahassee Historical Society explored putting a state historical marker at the corner of Thomasville Road and Kerry Forest Parkway to commemorate the original Thomasville Road, dating from the 1820s and one of the prime early lifelines of this community.
As I write this, you can still stand at the corner and look south and see the very deep impression of the old roadbed. But by the time this sees print, you may be out of luck. The bulldozers are clearing the land and filling the old roadbed every day between Velda Dairy Road and Kerry Forest Parkway and soon it will be gone. We were turned down on the marker because the land was destined to be another retail nirvana.
Have no fear about our historical marker, however. The good folks at St. Peters Anglican Cathedral allowed us to put it in their parking lot. The last remnant of the old Thomasville roadbed runs along St. Peters back boundary, though you can’t see it very well for all the brush. (We will dedicate that marker at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, June 28. The public is invited.)
If you’re like me, you feel a sense of melancholy about all this. Property tax relief? Sure. But we will certainly have to adjust our expectations for what our local governments can do for us. But hey, there’s a bright side to this: no one is suggesting an AI data center for Tallahassee. Yet.
Bob Holladay is president of the Tallahassee Historical Society. Email him at President@TallahasseeHistoricalSociety.org, but please keep it civil.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Don’t we all love tax reductions? Well, maybe. | Opinion
Reporting by Bob Holladay, Your Turn / Tallahassee Democrat
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By Bob Holladay, Your Turn | USA TODAY Network
