Florida homeschoolers met with Jeff Atwater our Florida Senator at a meet and greet last week. I drove to Boca Raton for this meeting. I was very pleased with the outcome of the meeting and I even discussed Real Estate issues and the Florida State Documentary Stamp Tax issue and confusion with him. That will be for a later post.
We met at one of the homeschooling family's homes. The home was packed full of parents and children. This was a great opportunity for homeschooled kids to learn about the political process. They had tables there to sign up to help with campaigning for Jeff Atwater who is running for his last term as Senator in the Florida State Senate. Florida is a term limit state so there are no lifers here. This is good because Senators can then work for their principles and values more.
Also, here in Florida the pay is very low. Jeff Atwater is married and has 4 children. There is no way you can support a family with the salary. Jeff is a banker by trade. He felt in his heart that he needed to serve on a political level. Congressmen and women in Florida only make $29,000 a year to serve. That is one of the reasons so many attorneys run for office. They are able to leave their practice for short periods of time.
Children and teens of all ages asked very good questions. One 8 year old girl asked Jeff, what is the difference between a Republican and a Democrat. It was so cute and the whole audience just gasped, like, how do you answer that to an 8 year old! Jeff Atwater handled her question so kindly and explained his answer in such a way for her to understand. There were all kinds of questions from the youth.
Most of us parents were interested in updates in regards to our property taxes and homeschooling issues. Florida is a homeschool friendly state with Governor Crist even declaring Home Education week.
Our concerns are of the erosion of parental rights in our country. Most parents in our communities homeschool for religious freedom reasons, moralitly reasons and nowadays- safety reasons. With more and more government control over the family and decisions that families make in their homes it is only logical that we as parents become concerned. If you would like to find out more about how the UN and the global community is threatening our parental rights please read this very important post I wrote about this subject.
Jeff assured us that he is looking out for the rights of parents and our rights to homeschool. There will always be those that are against what we do and who will try to stop us so we must be on our toes and be proactive in making sure our rights to homeschool our children remain as they are today.
If you are interested to know how your tax dollars are wasted and spent, read the following:
- Property Taxes in Florida have gone up 88% in the last 5 years with skyrocketing property values but the income levels did not go up.
This is what local governments did not take into consideration as they lavishly spent those tax dollars with no regard to the fact that what goes up must come down. They also were not taking into consideration the 3% cap on property taxes as they were so happily spending the money.
- The school districts spending increased by 176% int the last 5 years.
- The cities spending increased by 105% and the counties increased by 89%.
- These governental bodies were spending money 5 times faster that the household income in our state.
These entities complained to Jeff Atwater about that they are not going to have to curb spending! Jeff's answer was, why were you not saving for a rainy day? Why did you spend all the money?
In contrast the state of Florida has a 72 Billion dollar budget which they reduced to 66 Billion dollars.
They saw it coming and reduced their spending.
This year they will only be 1.8 Billion dollars shy of a balanced budget, but that they will be taking out of their savings so there not be a deficit.
The state of Florida does not get any of your PROPERTY TAX dollars! That was amazing to me to realize. I guess I should have noticed that when I look on my tax bill but I just did not match it up.
Your property tax dollars go to your county, your towns and cities and your public school districts.
Now we all know that before the boom, we had schools, we had towns and we had counties. We had police and firemen, we had county services and garbage pickup.
Let us put that in perspective again;
- we have no state income tax,
- no sales tax on food
- and only a 6% state sales tax on non food items.
California is one of the highest taxing states. They tax you for everything there. They have income tax there. Their property taxes have increased as well. Now, even with all that money coming in California now has a 15 Billion dollar deficit!
Here are the local updates on tax issues in our area:
Village of Wellington Florida Tax update
Palm Beach county Florida Tax update
Realtors Speak out against higher taxes.
The people called for property taxes to get lowered. We voted yes to lower taxes on the state ballot in January. Now the towns and our county officials are calling Jeff Atwater begging him not to get any more tax relief because they are having to cut back. Well, they should have thought of that during the boom. He does not work for the town managers, he works for the people and he will continue to fight to lower the property taxes.
Here is a snippet of Jeff Atwater speaking to our homeschool group.
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Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved.* Florida Homeschoolers Meet With Jeff Atwater- Florida Senator.*
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