Referendum: Property Tax Exemptions for Businesses or Not?

Primary elections will be held on August 20th ,2024. The ballot referendum question is:

Shall he Board of County Commissioners of Pinellas County Florida be authorized to grant, pursuant to s. 3 Art. VII of the State Constitution, property tax exemptions to new businesses and expansions of existing businesses that are expected to create new full-time jobs in Pinellas County.

I was not sure whether to vote for or against this proposal, and was unable to find much information about it; so I posted on Next Door and asked what neighbors thought. On one hand I understand that jobs are essential for Pinellas County, and it may be necessary to do something to encourage businesses to come here and stay here. On the other hand, our property tax system is already. quite inequitable with people paying vastly different amounts for similar properties. Giving an advantage to businesses makes the tax burden even more unfairly distributed; not to mention that special privileges to various groups is always a very slippery slope. The nearly 70 comments on my Next Door post were overwhelmingly negative: Vote NO.

During the Next Door discussion, it was brought to our attention that this referendum referred to a program that has been on-going for 10 years. Evidently 60% of Saint Pete residents voted in favor of this issue ten years ago. Of course, this brought up the questions like; What are the statistics are for the last ten years? How much in property taxes was uncollected and, many jobs did we gain from how many businesses and at what salaries? Is this program working? Is it effective? Is this a positive trade-off for Saint Petersburg?

I emailed the City Council of Saint Petersburg for information and was told to contact the County Commissioners. The County told me to contact ‘Economic Development’. Economic Development referred me to their Public Relations/Media Manager.

Within a day or so, I heard from the Public Relations Manager of Pinellas County Economic Development, the people who administer this Ad Valorem Tax Exemption program. From the information they provided, I was unable to fully understand the situation regarding the program. The Economic. Development Representative told me that they, 'Can only say so much about it'. They are not allowed to advocate 'for or against' this program due to some ruling of the Florida Legislature. She stated that this ability to provide tax exemptions is just another ‘tool’ that the County has at their disposal. It seems we are tasked with voting YES or NO on this issue, but getting information about the effectiveness of the current state-of-affairs, seems a bit tricky. I was starting to get a sense of, government bureaucracy run amuck.

The Economic Development Public Relations Manager was able to provide me with some facts and figures about the program however. During the past 10 year it has provided one business with tax exemptions totaling $28,756.00. This business has created 12 jobs with an average salary of $105,913.55 (This figure can be deceptive however, as it is an average not a median. But on the other hand, it may indicate 12 well-paid positions.) Twelve businesses have shown interest in the program. Nine dropped out, or did not make it through the process, and three are still in the works.

These figures suggest that this process may be a twisted quagmire of hoops and approvals that could do more to discourage business than promote it. I would need to talk to individuals who have had experience with the process to know for sure however. I received no information on the administrative costs of this program. Clearly the County has sparingly used this ‘tool’ over the past 10 years as only one business has made it through the process although twelve have tried; with three of those still in process. Hopefully not too many man hours are consumed by this process.

Admittedly my research was brief and certainly did not get to the bottom of this thing; but it sounds a bit wonky and I too will vote NO.