PROPERTY TAXES

ONE TAX PLAN DOES NOT FIT ALL
As they debate the most dramatic changes to property-tax law in decades, Florida lawmakers are discovering a problem: Five years of boom-boom real estate sales did not produce identical results around the state.
In Apalachicola, a fourfold spike in property values threatens the seafood industry's workforce. In Jacksonville, frugal budget writers fear they will be punished by lawmakers despite their tight-fisted ways. And in Bradford County,money is so tight that when a dredging machine, which was taxed as property, moved to another county, it blew a hole in the Bradford budget.
With 67 counties spread across two time zones, Florida remains a patchwork of economies. And finding a single fair method of reducing taxes has been tricky at best.
The real estate boom arrived and left at different times in different areas of the state. Growth in Apalachicola's Franklin County, for example, surpassed that of all other counties, even those in urban areas.
But Bradford's boom was short-lived, beginning and ending in the past two years. Home prices and incomes remain low enough that residents are more concerned with affording a mortgage payment than affording a tax bill.