The tiny town of St. Leo is kicking around the idea of changing its tax system. Like their municipal brethren in Dade City and New Port Richey, the town leaders are pondering shifting the payments from property taxes to a fee-based system.
Dade City bagged the idea of street light and fire-protection fees after a public uproar. New Port Richey also canned its fire fee, but adopted the lighting levy.
St. Leo, however, is thinking differently. The notion there is to eliminate property taxes entirely and to finance government operations through fees charged for cell phones, long distance service, electricity and cable television.
Doing so would reward property owners but penalize the town's biggest institution, Saint Leo University, and its student body.
St. Leo's Town Commission should kill this idea. It is a misguided attempt to make the town more attractive for annexation, particularly the 800 home sites in the Lake Jovita Country Club development that lie outside the municipal boundaries.
In essence, the town would be waiving property taxes for the owners of the area's most opulent homes and sticking it to college kids and the nonprofit university they attend.
And exactly why would the town want to get bigger if it isn't interested in growing its tax base? It is the 21st century version of pitching sunshine and low taxes - and we do mean low - to attract new residents absent the forethought of how to pay for services those newcomers will require.
The numbers aren't particularly staggering. The property tax rate is $3 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The owners of the town's homesteads will pay just less than $80,000 in property taxes this year toward the $352,000 municipal budget.
But the plan, as discussed in a work session last week, would be to substitute new or higher taxes on utilities for property taxes. The university, as a nonprofit institution, is exempt from property taxes, but would have to pay utility taxes collected by the providers. Students would be hit if they pay local cell phone or cable television bills.
Currently, St. Leo charges no electricity tax and has a 1 percent communications tax that is expected to bring in $6,600 this budget year. Under state law, it can charge a 10 percent tax on electricity and increase its communications tax fivefold.
Mayor Janis Klingle suggested the shift is a good idea because the taxes will be pushed onto controllable expenses. We disagree. Electricity is a necessity and should not be confused with discretionary spending.
If St. Leo, a town of modest means, was near the constitutional limit on its property tax rate, the search for new money would be easier to digest. But this is a simple shift of the burden from local property owners to nonprofits and to visitors, the out-of-town students who attend the college nine months a year and who already help prop up the local retail economy by shopping, eating and buying gasoline in east Pasco.
Attempting to balance the minimal cost of town government on their backs is unfair.
