Sarasota City, County to Look (Again) at Dual Taxation

Do Sarasota city taxpayers subsidize the county because they never call the sheriff?

Do county taxpayers subsidize the city because they pay for the jail?

These are question going back decades, and they are coming back.

At the joint Sarasota City-County Commission meeting Tueday afternoon, the age-old issue of “dual taxation” was raised. And both commissions seemed to pledge an honest effort to look at it. 

“For me it’s a basic fairness question. You guys may be more than fair to us,” said Sarasota City Commissioner Terry Turner. “We’re 14 percent of the county’s population, and 17 percent of the ad valorum tax base, and we generate 30 percent of the tourist tax and more than 20 percent of the non-advalorum taxes. I’d be comfortable if the five financial directors [four cities in the county plus the county] got together and agreed on a methodology.”

That was tried in 2008, when the five financial directors gathered on May 6. City Finance Director Chris Lyons was one of them. “There was no follow-up meeting held until a couple of weeks ago,” said Lyons. “There was a lot of disagreement on May 6 about the allocations. There was nothing about city services to county taxpayers when they came into the cities to work. We could go around-and-around for years.”

Indeed the issue is long-lived. Sarasota County’s four cities filed suit in the 1970s over “dual taxation,” and the Florida Supreme Court eventually ruled in the cities’ favor. Sarasota got a $4 million check, and a promise from the county to help with park maintenance. This year the .

The county responded to the issue by itemizing its budget in what became eight five-inch-thick binders, which it called the Cities Project. The assumptions behind those binders – who paid for what – became a point of contention at the May 6, 2008 meeting. “It’s not an accounting question,” said Lyons. “It’s a legal question.”

It came to a head on June 4 this year at the Sarasota Coalition of City Neighborhood Associations meeting. Former Saraota Mayor Dick Clapp distributed an analysis and said, “We have a significant investment in the Saraota County budget. But what are we getting back? We need to have that conversation.”

On Tuesday, county commissioners approved their staff engaging in Clapp’s “conversation.” Steve Botelho, the county’s interim finance director said, “I wasn’t aware there was supposed to be a follow-up that 2008 meeting. It sounds like it was supposed to get worked out, but it wasn’t. I suggest we get our staffs together.”

“This issue is as old as the hills. I’m not a newcomer to this issue” said County Commission Chair Nora Patterson, a former mayor of the City of Sarasota. “I do have sympathy with the city’s position.”

Not all county commissioners were as agreable. Christine Robinson asked repeatedly for an example of dual taxation. “Are we throwing this up in the air to see what lands on the ground?,” she asked. “Why should we devote staff time when a specific problem has not been identified?”

At the end of the discussion, County Commisioner Jon Thaxton said, “Let’s get the financial folks together to look at the methadology, to look at the fairness among the municipalities.”

It appears the follow-up to the May 6 meeting of three years ago may actually occur.