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Citizens activists are coming to Lee County

By Staff | Jun 18, 2009

Marge Patchett

Margie Patchett, executive director of “Lower Taxes Now” has brought her grass roots campaign of tax and government reform to Lee County.

In an interview with The Citizen she talked about how the campaign began and the current efforts to take it statewide.

In 2005 she said she saw the tax and real estate problems in her home area of Volusia County, which includes Daytona Beach, Ormond Beach, Port Orange, New Smyrna Beach, and 12 other cities. In January the county manager proposed a $100 million increase in the county budget to the Volusia County Council. She joined with Maureen France to oppose what she called “runaway spending.”

Positive responses to their e-mails were not received.

As a result she said she invited 25 people to her home. In six weeks they had collected 10,000 petition signatures. At the first September budget hearing, more than 600 citizens descended on the County Council at the new administration building. This building with its marble floors had cost $125 million. After four hours of public comment from the public the council reconsidered its budget, she said.

She also noted that due to the public outcry they cancelled the $100 million increase, adopted the roll back rate and cut spending by $34 million.

In 2008 they helped to elect a reform candidate, Joshua Wagner, to the council.

“The citizens of Lee County will be forming a group to start reviewing the budgets. Also, it will be their goal to educate the citizens of Lee County exactly where their taxpayer dollars are being spent and to hold their elected officials accountable to fiscal spending,” Patchett said.

“They are in the process now of organizing. We are encouraging the taxpayer groups in each county to hold an educational town hall meeting with their property appraiser come late August after citizens receive their TRIM Notices.

“We anticipate homestead property taxes to increase dramatically this year due to the tax assessments falling and government increasing their millage rates to make up for the decline in the real estate market. The citizens need to be educated that it is a spending problem by our government,” she said.

With Matt Falconer she founded Lower Taxes Now.

By taking the campaign statewide, she said they hope to “increase the efficiency of government services; encourage consolidation of governmental resources to save money; lower taxes by lowering costs; and encourage citizen involvement in reducing government spending.”

Matt Falconer, the founder of Taxpayer Budget Review Committees of Florida (TBRC) said that “Margie will take our message to all 67 counties in Florida and start a budget study in each county. She will speak to every organization or business that will listen.”

She said their purpose is to achieve “elimination of duplication of government services and greater government efficiency.”

Falconer directed the Orange County (Orlando) Taxpayer Budget Review Board and issued a final report on April 15, 2009. This report showed that through consolidation and regionalization Orange County could cut $1.2 billion from their more than $7 billion budget.

They have established local grassroots organizations for Orange, Osceola, Pasco, Hernando, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.

She said Lee and Volusia counties are similar. Volusia has almost the same population as Lee County with 575,000 but a much larger area. In contrast Volusia provides for government with a budget of $634 million compared to Lee’s budget of $1.2 billion. She encouraged taxpayers of Lee to organize their own group to bring about greater governmental efficiency. She offered her non-partisan non- profit organization to help in the effort to get a local group established.

In the 2008 election cycle, they succeeded in defeating 80 to 90 percent of the incumbents in the greater Volusia area. They hope to field 1,000 reform candidates statewide in the 2010 elections, she said.