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Letter to the editor

Covetous cities find that girth helps fiscal fitness

Annexation is a win-lose proposition in every way.

By ANNE LINDBERG, Times Staff Writer
Published August 12, 2007

To hear some municipal officials tell it, annexation is a service they offer to those lucky enough to be contiguous to a city.

They speak of the wonders their city offers: parks, lower fees, the ambience and so on.

Although it might be true, the rosy picture they paint masks an important fact:

Annexed properties can bring a whole lot of tax dollars to city coffers.

But the city's gain means someone else's loss. Annexations can deprive other agencies of needed tax money and increase the tax burden on those left behind.

Consider the block at the southwest corner of 49th Street and 60th Avenue N, the site of Northside Hospital.

That block has four privately owned parcels, which have a total value of about $31-million, according to the Pinellas County Property Appraiser's Office.

All the parcels are in the unincorporated Lealman area. The owners pay fire taxes to the Lealman Fire District, whose millage rate is 4.3. (A mill is $1 of tax for every $1,000 of assessed value.)

That gives Lealman's fire department about $133,000 in property taxes from Northside's owners. The fire district's current budget is about $5.4-million.

But Pinellas Park has long wanted to annex Northside. If it does, the city will add about $154,000 to its current $48.2-million operating budget. (The 2006-07 millage rate in Pinellas Park is 4.9788.)

If that annexation ever happens, the Lealman Fire Department will take a big hit. To make up for the lost revenue, other taxpayers in Lealman will have to pony up more money to keep the fire department going.

That's the math that has helped fuel Lealman activists in their fight to protect their borders and their 45,000 or so residents from annexation.

"There are really two issues. One of them is the financial part ... but we also have an emotional attachment to this community," said Ray Neri, president of the Lealman Community Association, which has led the antiannexation movement.

Neri and other activists would like to see the Legislature pass a community protection act to secure Lealman's borders against annexation and preserve its tax base.

Ideally, he said, other communities in unincorporated communities across the state could take advantage of the act.

The Legislature did pass a bill this year that has put Pinellas Park, St. Petersburg, Seminole, Kenneth City, Pinellas County and the Lealman Fire District at the bargaining table to try to solve the annexation battles.

Several possible solutions were broached at a meeting last Monday, but none of them involved protecting Lealman's borders.

The concept of leaving Lealman alone does not play well in cities. Pinellas Park Mayor Bill Mischler, in particular, argues that such an act would take away the right of landowners to choose to be in a city or the unincorporated county. But Mischler does not support freedom of choice when it comes to "de-annexing" from a city back into the unincorporated area.

Pinellas Park's argument has long been that people want to become part of the city, which only does voluntary annexations. This fiscal year alone, Pinellas Park has annexed 14 commercial properties and 24 residential parcels.

The collective value is about $7.9-million and has brought about $83,000 in property taxes to the city. None of the annexations have been in the Lealman area.

"In most of the cases that we annex, the people want to be part of the city. We're reaching out to people to see if they want to be a part of this community," said Tom Shevlin, assistant city manager.

Many of the annexations involved landowners who were in Pinellas Park's water service area.

With annexation, the landowner eliminates the surcharge tacked on to water bills Pinellas Park sends to customers in the unincorporated area. The city gets the property taxes without having to increase services because the property owner was already receiving them.

But while touting the city's friendliness, Shevlin concedes that Pinellas Park does benefit financially from annexations, especially where commercial property is concerned.

"They generally require less services than residents," Shevlin said, referring to services that include parks and other recreation. With less of the tax money going for services for that property, it can help elsewhere.

"They help underwrite through their taxes the things that are beneficial to the residential property," Shevlin said.

[Last modified August 11, 2007, 23:04:14]