If you attended St. Petersburg’s town-hall meeting on property tax reform last week, you might have noticed Charlie Smith wandering around, waiting for his turn to speak to the small delegation of state legislators. A self-described “true St. Petersburg cracker,” Smith, 65, railed against the people who showed up to complain about their taxes and offered his own insight into solutions. Here’s the retired building superintendent on:
Those who complain about property taxes:
They yell about their taxes, but do you see all these nice SUVs out here? I guess they're not doing too bad if they can afford to drive those gas-guzzlers. Like they say on the Business Channel: It's supply and demand. St. Petersburg used to be cheap; it's not anymore.
His solution to the budget shortfalls:
You can say one thing: We need a personal state income tax down here, like 43 other states have. … If you compare the state income taxes and property taxes up north, they're paying more up there than we are down here.
The city slashing budgets:
How you going to pay the policemen? How you going to pay the firemen? You want to keep people in jail? I mean, [Pinellas County] wants $215 million for a new jail, and that ain't including support staff. How you going to do that?
Ways the city can save money:
Some services they can cut back on, buses especially. They can make them smaller, like in Europe. You don't need these big buses driving around in St. Pete. You can get a 20-passenger instead of 40-passenger, and it still won't be full. And these big corporations down here — don't give them tax breaks on their land.
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story ran with the wrong introduction. The error has been corrected.
This article appears in May 30 – Jun 5, 2007.