With a deadline just a week away to submit measures to get on the March 1 ballot, the Tampa City Council on Thursday voted unanimously to place a referendum on that ballot that would give tax breaks to new businesses coming to the city, or to current businesses that expand their number of employees.
The measure is intended to create an equal playing field for Tampa in the wake of Hillsborough County voters approving a similar measure last November, said Mark Huey, the city's Economic and Urban Development Administrator. That's because under the current draft plan now being discussed in the county, businesses in the unincorporated areas of Hillsborough could receive property tax exemptions related to two millage components while businesses located in the city of Tampa could only be granted an exemption related to one millage component.
Huey said most cities and counties in Florida until recently have never adopted such "tools," but as the economy continues to struggle, more and more local governments are now adopting such ordinances.
The Tampa measure calls on granting a tax exemption for new or expanding businesses of up to 100% for up to 10 years. Hillsborough's measure would waive up to 50 percent of the country portion of property taxes for businesses that create at least 10 jobs. For businesses in severely depressed areas, up to 75 percent of property taxes could be exempted. Tampa officials say they would work out the details if the measure gets approved.
Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan was the driving force in getting the measure on the county ballot in November, where it passed easily, 64%-36%. Commissioner Kevin Beckner tells CL that he's attempting to create a provision to also give a tax break to minority owned businesses in the county, which he says St. Lucie County's tax break measure also calls for. In Thursday's discussion, Huey said the city could do something similar, after Councilman Curtis Stokes inquired about specifically helping out any businesses located in Tampa's Sulpher Springs and East Tampa regions.
Meanwhile, city politics also came into play. Last Thursday, former city councilman and now mayoral candidate Bob Buckhorn wrote to the council requesting that they place an initiative that would bring in more businesses in bio-tech, life sciences, defense and financial services, boldly declaring that if they didn't, he would if elected mayor.
City Councilman Curtis Stokes told CL at the time that he thought it was a great idea, but added that Mayor Iorio was about to introduce her own initiative calling for that. Buckhorn said he had heard nothing about that -which to be honest, neither had CL.
But this morning one of Buckhorn's rivals in the mayor's race, Council Chair Thomas Scott, emphasized before Mark Huey even addressed the council about the details of the plan that in fact the mayor and the council had been working on such a measure for weeks before Buckhorn ever addressed the issue.
"I have documentation all the way back to December 15 about a discussion" about this, Scott said, before giving a breakdown on other specific dates in December when the item was being worked on. "I want to be clear that this referendum ….was already on the agenda when you received a letter (from Buckhorn)."
Mary Mulhern backed Scott up, as they both said the council deserved credit for initiating the measure.
This article appears in Jan 6-12, 2011.