Wellington has remade its entire budget process this year, and the result will likely be fewer services for its relatively pampered residents.

The village is examining all its expenses and ranking them in importance from “must haves” that the village is required to provide to nice but unnecessary services.

With property tax reform looming in the Legislature, those unnecessary services likely won’t make it on the budget this year. Francine Ramaglia, the village’s finance director, expects Wellington will only be able to fund services ranked as level one or level two under the tax cuts. Services ranked either one or two are considered required, either by law or Wellington’s own comprehensive plan.

“If you cut back to level two, it’s a good level of service,” Ramaglia said. “But it’s not a Wellington level of service.” Read more

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TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Senate early Thursday approved its version of a property tax relief package that rolls back city and county taxes while providing extra tax breaks for first time homebuyers and business owners.

The vote sets the stage for the House and Senate to immediately begin working out their differences over how to address a brewing property tax crisis that led hundreds of homeowners from across the state to protest outside the Capitol earlier this week.

“This plan benefits every single property owner in the state,” said Senate Majority Leader Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden. “I think it’s pretty awesome.”

The House plan, passed Wednesday, calls for a major cut in local government property taxes and would let voters decide if they want to eliminate property taxes in exchange for an increase in the state’s 6 percent sales tax. The House plan could ultimately lead to a 2.5-cent increase in the sales tax, making it the highest state-mandated sales tax in the country. But House leaders are predicting homeowners could ultimately save $35 billion over the next five years. Read more

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TALLAHASSEE — After hearing from Florida homeowners furious over taxes, Gov. Charlie Crist on Wednesday unveiled his own property tax-cut plan that aides said would lop 12 percent off average homeowners’ bills in its first year and reduce their taxes by a total of more than $2,900 within five years.

With House-Senate negotiations apparently going nowhere, Crist jumped in to try to break the deadlock. On Tuesday, hundreds of South Florida residents had told the governor at a town hall meeting that they needed tax relief right away.

“It’s important that we continue to let the Legislature do its job,” Crist said Wednesday. But he said legislators, who have been unable to agree over the past eight weeks, had come to him privately to say, “We think you can help us along a little bit.”

The plan presented by Crist to House and Senate conferees did not include the crux of the plan pushed by his fellow Republicans in the House: the abolition of property taxes on Floridians’ year-round residences and an increase in the state sales tax. Read more

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Mortgage insurers are having a great year, thanks to borrowers who want to avoid piggyback mortgages with a variable rate, according to David H. Katkov, president and chief operating officer of PMI Mortgage Insurance Co.
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Worried sellers are again considering financial incentives, including taking back a second mortgage to entice buyers.

Several factors can make a second trust, as it is often called, attractive to buyers and sellers, including:

—The buyer won’t need to come up with so much cash.
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Anticipating cuts in property taxes by the state Legislature, the Palm Beach County administrator ordered countywide reductions in next year’s budget, a decision that could mean there won’t be enough money to hire sheriff’s deputies, buy fire vehicles or open planned library facilities.

County Administrator Bob Weisman said Wednesday that he expects county commissioners to view the measures as mistakes — but ones they will have no choice but to implement.

“It’s bad government to do it,” Weisman said. “It’s going to leave government unable to do things for the people that they should.”

In a memo to commissioners, Weisman said the county will have to cut down to the bare basics of its 2007 budget of $4.4 billion while dealing with skyrocketing gas, insurance and construction costs. Read more

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TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Senate early Thursday approved its version of a property tax relief package that rolls back city and county taxes while providing extra tax breaks for first time homebuyers and business owners.

The vote sets the stage for the House and Senate to immediately begin working out their differences over how to address a brewing property tax crisis that led hundreds of homeowners from across the state to protest outside the Capitol earlier this week.

“This plan benefits every single property owner in the state,” said Senate Majority Leader Dan Webster, R-Winter Garden. “I think it’s pretty awesome.”

The House plan, passed Wednesday, calls for a major cut in local government property taxes and would let voters decide if they want to eliminate property taxes in exchange for an increase in the state’s 6 percent sales tax. The House plan could ultimately lead to a 2.5-cent increase in the sales tax, making it the highest state-mandated sales tax in the country. But House leaders are predicting homeowners could ultimately save $35 billion over the next five years. Read more

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A deluge of South Floridians are falling behind on their monthly house payments, raising fears that many of the delinquent property owners will lose their homes to foreclosure this year and next.

“Who knows how bad it’s going to get,” said Richard French, a manager with SunTrust Mortgage and president of the Broward County chapter of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “It’s a little scary to think about.”

Escalating home values from 2000 to 2005 caused buyers to overextend themselves. Many took out short-term, adjustable-rate mortgages and are seeing their loan payments spike as interest rates rise. Higher property taxes and insurance premiums also are putting homeowners in peril.

Broward had 1,168 property owners with late payments in March, a 331 percent increase over the 271 a year ago, according to Realestat.com, a Plantation-based firm that compiles local housing statistics. Palm Beach County’s late payments climbed 288 percent, to 888, from 229 last March.

Late home loan payments in both counties increased in each of the first three months of 2007. The rise “bodes ill for actual foreclosures down the road,” said Mike Larson, an analyst with Weiss Research in Jupiter.

Marc Thomashaw, a vice president for Realestat.com, was more blunt. Read more

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Mohsin Bari came from Pakistan seven years ago to work as a software consultant and quickly moved ahead in an industry clamoring for more foreign workers. He started a family, bought a three-bedroom house on a corner lot in Pembroke Pines and moved up the ladder.

Now Bari worries that his push to succeed in the United States is threatened by skyrocketing property taxes, which have stretched his family’s budget. He’s upset that, even as a homeowner who is legally in the country, he doesn’t qualify for a homestead exemption or the 3 percent Save Our Homes tax cap.

South Florida property appraisers say there are hundreds of people like Bari, legal immigrants who have lived in the United States for years but don’t yet have green cards or qualify for breaks on their property taxes. The trend has become more pronounced as immigrants account for more and more of the newcomers to Broward and Palm Beach counties, and it coincides with a hot debate over how to lower property taxes for cash-strapped homeowners.

Like snowbirds and business owners, many legal immigrants don’t qualify for the residential tax breaks that have helped hold down taxes on primary residences.

The situation has Bari wondering if he should sell the home he worked so hard to acquire. Although federal authorities have approved his labor certification, his green card application is still inching through the system. Read more

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TALLAHASSEE — Republican and Democratic leaders in the state Senate united Thursday behind what could become the core of a deal to reduce Floridians’ property taxes, proposing $11 billion in cuts spread over the next five years.

The plan borrows heavily from strategies suggested by South Florida’s Senate Democrats, and whittles down the tax burden on homeowners and businesses through a variety of rate cuts and policy changes.

Among its provisions are a rollback of local government spending and a ceiling on future growth of city and county budgets that is pegged to inflation and population.

The plan would allow Florida residents to take their Save Our Homes tax cap benefit with them when they move. It also includes tax breaks for people purchasing their first home.

“This is across the board,'’ said Sen. Mike Haridopolos, R-Melbourne, chairman of the Senate’s Finance and Tax Committee. “First-time homebuyers. Persons trapped in their home. Or an empty nester. That’s what we tried to do: Help all Floridians.'’ Read more

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