BY TRACY LEE TATE
Times Editor
LAKE BUTLER — The Union County Board of County Commissioners met in a special, public workshop on Monday, April 18, 2022 to discuss several matters that are under consideration for the county.
The first item addressed was the idea of hiring a paid recreation director for the county programs. The position would be responsible for helping to maintain the county ball fields and other facilities, as well as running the concessions at ball games and various administrative duties.
The need for such a position has been discussed before, in large part due to the lower numbers of inmates available to the county through the Department of Corrections. According to the original agreement, the county was to have use of about 40 inmates on an as needed basis – used to handle tasks for the solid waste, road and recreation departments. According to County Coordinator Jimmy Williams, the county now had access to only 24 per day.
The position could be easily paid for with funds budgeted for the salary for a program assistant at the UF IFAS Extension Office that will be saved due to a new agreement with UF about the requirements for the person selected ($38,000). Williams said, however, that another problem was on the horizon that would greatly reduce the amount of funds the county receives from ad valorem taxes.
Williams said that a new homestead exemption had been proposed for fire department, emergency medical services employees, DOC Correctional Officers and social workers that would reduce their tax bills by allowing an additional $50,000 of exempted value on the taxes owed. The proposal is now on the Governor’s desk awaiting approval.
Williams confirmed with Union County Property Appraiser Bruce Dukes that this additional exemption, if approved, would amount to an average of $1,000 off the average property tax assessment on each property owned by a taxpayer working in one of these positions, reducing the tax money received by the county by about $500 per property. HE said he did not think is wise to create a new position, thus spending the savings on the cost of the Extension Office position, at least until it was known if the proposal became law.
Williams added that the position could be funded with ARPA funds, but that that money was not always going to be there for the county.
“For something like this, the ARPA money is just a band aid, not a permanent income,” Williams told commissioners.
The board is still looking at options for taking care of the shortage of labor for the recreation department and requested that Williams continue to look for other available resources that could be used to fund it. He was also asked to see if it would be possible to get additional daily inmate workers to handle the maintenance at the parks.
In a second matter, the board heard comments from Union County Sheriff Brad Whitehead about a growing problem in the county – the proliferation of campers, RVs and tiny houses being placed on land which already had a home located on it. He asked the county to look into hiring a code enforcement officer to deal with the situation and rid the county of violations, as well as dealing with other pressing issues.
Whitehead also commented about local mobile home parks which were deteriorating badly. He said these parks almost always started out clean and nice, but over time became derelict, with many units in need of condemnation – an action that cannot be taken without a code enforcement officer.
Whitehead said these areas (both the mobile home parks and the proliferation of other living arrangements such as RVs and tiny houses, led to expense to the county through the sheer number of calls received for county services, such as law enforcement and emergency medical services. He said that, in the past year, the Sheriffs Office responded to 295 calls, with 75 of them requiring the presence of two or more officers.
Williams said that, as the situation stands now, most of these “problem” living units paid no taxes, or at least not the appropriate amount. Property owners are allowing these “homes” to be placed on their property and, if taxed at all, are taxed as property additions rather than homes. He also noted that the county had an LDR that stated there would be only one “home” on a property and that an RV could not be allowed to be used as a living space for more than six months (a provision designed to help residents who were building a home on their property and needed to live on site).
Whitehead and Williams also said that many of the mobile homes in the parks did not keep their registration stickers current – another loss of income to the county. County Attorney Russ Wade added that many of these plots (properties) did not pay ad valorem taxes, or at least not in a correct amount, because of loopholes in the laws which were taken advantage of by situations where the lot (property) was owned by one person or company and the mobile home was owned by another individual. He added that the owner of the home could be taxed through the tax on tangible property unless it was owned by the same person or entity that owned the land.
Whitehead said he was very concerned about the drain on county resource and that he sees the problem growing steadily greater over time. He said he was afraid of the time that such properties placed too high a demand for services for people not paying their fair share of taxes to fund the services.
“South Florida is moving up and in on us, with increasing numbers every year,” Whitehead told commissioners. “The problem is just going to get worse unless we do something.”
Commissioner Lacey Cannon added that these “immigrants” are making use of county schools, waste services, EMS, fire protection and law enforcement without paying for it. Whitehead agreed, noting that in some places there were five or six living units on a single property, plus the property owners’ home.
Wade noted that an RV qualifies as the same as a mobile home under the law and, if it was permeant attached to the property, as in a permanent hook-up for water, sewer and electric, is legal and could be taxed in the same way as a mobile home would be on the same property. He added that there were other problems in the county that only a code enforcement officer could deal with, such as illegal junkyards and landfills.
Whitehead told the board that the calls received from these alternate living spaces, and the activity they seemed to attract and encourage, was accounting for over 50% of calls received and many of these are not for minor problems. He added that he had been told that residents of these arrangements were considered to be the source of most of the problems dealt with in the county schools.
Williams added that, “Within five years all this will be totally out of hand and it needs to be dealt with now. He said that the funds that the county would receive by agreeing to a franchise fee with Florida Power and Light would easily pay for the salary of a code enforcement officer and that, if necessary, the position could be added in to that of building inspector, who would be aware of all of the codes, rules and restrictions the law placed on such living arrangements.
The board agreed that the hiring of a code enforcement officer be a matter that needed to be dealt with soon. Commissioner Ryan Perez said that he believed the constitution of a code enforcement board, made of volunteer citizens, would also be necessary, but was cautioned that the selection of these volunteers would have to be done carefully.
“Code enforcement can be used by some people in a vindictive way to cause problems for their neighbors and others,” Commissioner Jimmy Tallman said. “We would have to be very careful about how things were dealt with.”
Williams was asked to look into how other small counties were dealing with the issue and see what would be done in Union County. The presence of a code enforcement officer would help remedy the situation quite quickly, because once people realized they could be fined on a daily basis for violations, and potentially lose their property of they continued to violate the codes and laws, they might be more careful about who and what they allowed to park on their property and the condition of their property in general.
While creating a spending plan for ARPA funds was one of the main reasons for the workshop, the commission decided to continue to work on the matter and hold another workshop next month. The process of determining what was allowed to be spent and for what purpose has become more and more complicated as the federal government has changed the rules and regulations about how the funds may be used several times.
Williams cautioned the commissioners and asked them to remember that the money was a one-time funding and that he was worried about using it to fund anything that would later need to be paid with county funds. He said that he was in favor of making “smart purchases” to meet the county’s most pressing needs.
“This money is not a fix for all the problems,” Williams said. “It is a band aid, designed to take care of specific sorts of problems and needs. We need to be careful of how it is spent, not only to stay within the legal restrictions for how it can be used, but also to get the most good for the county out of it.”
