Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies

Poor seniors may get new tax break

Pinellas Park favors giving the most struggling seniors an additional $25,000 exemption from property taxes.

PINELLAS PARK - Five years ago, City Council members unanimously turned down a proposal to give an additional tax break to this city's poor seniors. Now they appear ready to reverse themselves.

Council members have given tentative approval to a plan that could cut some seniors' property taxes. The plan would give low-income seniors a $25,000 tax exemption, in addition to the standard $25,000 homestead exemption that homeowners can receive.

The change of heart came after Pinellas County recently began considering a similar exemption for seniors in unincorporated Pinellas, said council member Ed Taylor, who proposed that the council reconsider the break. Plus, Taylor said, Pinellas Park is fiscally sound enough to absorb the loss in tax revenue.

"The city is doing very well financially," Taylor said Monday.

A 1999 "enabling" law passed by the state Legislature gave cities and counties the option to give low-income seniors up to an additional $25,000 homestead exemption.

Soon after it was passed, Pinellas Park looked into granting the exemption after a city resident asked them to consider it. But then-finance director Dick Wheaton estimated that granting the exemption could take between $200,000 and $300,000 from the 2000-2001 budget because there was no way to estimate how many eligible seniors would take advantage of the offer.

Since then, five Pinellas cities - Seminole, Dunedin, St. Pete Beach, St. Petersburg and Safety Harbor - have adopted some form of the exemption. Seminole, for example, agreed to give poor seniors an additional $10,000 a year homestead exemption.

Pinellas Park has a new estimate of the potential effect. Dan Katsyiannis, head of the city's budget department, wrote in a memo to City Manager Mike Gustafson that he used St. Petersburg's assumptions to extrapolate the potential loss in revenue.

Katsyiannis estimated that 460, or 4.9 percent, of the city's 9,390 senior property owners will be eligible for or will actually take advantage of the exemption. That, he said, would mean a loss of about $58,406 to the budget and an additional $126.97 a year in savings to the participating senior.

"The city's total estimated property tax revenue for this fiscal year is $13,732,246," Katsyiannis wrote. "As a result, the potential loss for the senior property tax exemption represents less than half of 1 percent of the city's total property tax revenue."

A final vote will likely come at next week's council meeting. The meeting will be Tuesday, rather than Thursday because of Thanksgiving, at 7:30 p.m. at City Hall, 5141 78th Ave. N.