DeSantis says he’s pushing for relief on property taxes in Florida: “You buy a home. You buy land. You’ve been taxed many times. Is it your property or not? You’re basically paying rent to the government to live on your own property. Just for being on your property, you’ve got to write a check to the government every year? Is it really your property if you keep getting taxed every year?” “A lot of people can’t afford that. That’s a big issue. We’re going to be looking at ways to bring people relief from that.”
I don’t really understand property taxes. I pay almost nothing because I live in unincorporated Kane County, so I don’t have city services or sanitation or any of that stuff. I’m on a well/septic system and I own the half mile gravel road that services my house and two neighbors. And I’m pretty sure I pay an annual fee to Sugar Grove for fire protection services, so ultimately I really have no need for property taxes until there’s kids and a bus route but I digress. My point is that I don’t really understand property taxes and why they’re so expensive.
My brother pays an arm and leg in DuPage County and I don’t think he gets that much. Cracker Barrel is nice and the school system is reliable, but we’re not a country store kinda family and I think the kids should be in catholic schools anyways. The same can be said about a lot of the services funded by property taxes. Like maybe I just don’t value the pension system the way other people do. And maybe County Coroner shouldn’t be an elected position but again, I digress.
What I’m trying to say is that I’ve been sleeping on Florida since I was in college and we’d travel down for spring break. I always thought Florida was for hillbillies and poor people and my grandparents 6 months a year. I didn’t know Florida was so fantastically nice and affluent in some areas until I was much older – like basically a couple years ago. I went down to Miami with a couple of heavy hitters for a bachelor party and I saw a completely different side of life. Then followed that up with a trip to Tampa then Naples and I felt the exact same way. All while legacy media in the north is telling you Florida people will eat bath salts, then your dog, then your eye balls. We’ve been conditioned to be afraid of this place and then you find out it’s actually awesome if you can overlook a lot of basic flaws.
Yes, adult Disney people scare the shit out of me and no I would not raise a kid in Florida.
But the golf courses hold up year round. The daiquiri culture doesn’t go away. And quite frankly I happened to enjoy Sarasota even if the layout is a little inconvenient and the beaches too chilly in December. The people and restaurants are really nice and that’s what I’ll always remember about Sarasota.
Is it enough for me to move there full time? Absolutely not. But the debate is already raging at Sterk Family Farms as to where we put our winter home and I always thought Scottsdale. But if DeSantis (who’s really growing on me) wants to cut property taxes 100% then I think we need to open up the conversation to include Florida.
That said, here’s what I’d do with INCREASED property taxes in Illinois:
- New White Sox stadium that’s small and appeals to White Sox fans
- New Bears stadium that’s big and appeals to Bears fans including a big parking lot and retractable roof so we can host big events like Final 4s and Wrestlemania
- Buy back Portillos and make Italian beef a fundamental right
- Add one lane each way on 290
- An extra night of fireworks at Navy Pier June-August only
- Armed guards at Red Line stations from Cermak to Irving Park
- Extend all bar licenses to 4am even though that has nothing to do with property taxes or money
- Increase taxes on all drinks sold in River North after 10pm and call it the douchebag tax
There’s a lot of other things I’d do with increased property taxes but this is a good start, and completely unrelated to Florida so let me reel it in quick and just say that I would pick Scottsdale entirely on spring training baseball alone.
I think that’s the point of the blog.