BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— Clay County Commissioner Betsy Condon told a Keystone Heights civic group that she fully supports first responders, while explaining her standalone opposition to the county commission’s recent vote to raise taxes.
Condon told the Keystone Heights Rotary Club during the group’s Oct. 13 meeting that the reason she voted against the 0.5-mil increase was because that’s what her constituents asked her to do.
“Almost to a person,” she told the group, “the people who reached out to me that did not have any connection with the sheriff’s department or the fire department asked me not to raise their taxes.”
Last month, the commission passed the millage increase with Condon casting the sole dissenting vote.
Condon said one Lake Region resident who works in Jacksonville told her that his property value went up so much that the subsequent increase in property taxes may force him out of the county.
“I had one restaurant owner say to me: ‘Betsy, I haven’t had a paycheck in over two years’,” she said recalling the conversation. “’My supply prices have gone up. I can’t hire enough employees It’s just not the time.’”
Condon said she also got a call from a young Navy family living in the Kingsley Lake area.
“A gentleman called me and said, ‘With my property value increase and the proposed tax increase, my property taxes went up 22%,’ and he said that’s a huge burden on his family.”
Condon said that supporters of the tax increase claimed that the effect of the additional 0.5 mils would only add $8 a month to the average homeowner’s tax bill. She added however, that when combined with the increase in property values virtually all Clay County property owners have experienced over the past year, the impact of the millage increase, combined with the rise in values, could be crippling.
She said that according to the Supervisor of Elections Office, 65% of the residents in her district are 65 or older.
“I talked to a lot of retired people on fixed incomes,” she said. “I had several people tell me that the $8 a month is (equivalent to) a Medicare prescription.”
The commissioner added that she believes the county could have funded raises for deputies and fire fighters without the increase in millage.
She said the budget passed by her colleagues included 18 new county administrative positions that were unrelated to fire-rescue or the sheriff’s office.
She also said that during a workshop last week about a proposed gun range for the sheriff’s office, commissioners uncovered what she characterized as unnecessary and expensive features of the complex, including galvalume roofs for the project’s structures and a paved road leading into the complex with thicker asphalt than the pavement on County Road 218.
“My question was: Why do we even have to pave the road and why is it thicker than the asphalt on 218?” she said. “The vast majority of the unpaved roads (in Clay County) are in our district and I don’t think it’s right that we go build a county property with a paved road when we aren’t paving roads for a lot of our residents.”
Condon added that since the vote, several Clay County public safety employees have told her that the raises they will actually receive is below what they thought they would get as a result of the millage increase.
“Unfortunately, that happens with that kind of thing because when you’re talking millions of dollars, but (spread) over hundreds of employees, it doesn’t amount to a lot per employee,” she said. “So, hopefully we can continue to raise wages in the coming years.”
