Thorough review needed before increasing Florence taxes

We are fundamentally opposed to a tax increase in this troubled economy, so we’d rather see the City of Florence proceed with a thorough review of its operating and capital budgets and exhaust other funding mechanisms before asking residents for additional money.
Florence urgently needs a new southside fire station to cut emergency response times and additional police officers to work in gang enforcement and community policing.
Mayor Stephen J. Wukela’s proposal to raise taxes, made formally at Monday’s council meeting, required political courage and doesn’t seem outrageous. However, his motion for support was met with caution by the council, as it should have been.
Instead, the council passed an operating budget without an increase and created a committee to study whether the tax increase is needed.
If federal money is available for public safety, shouldn’t the city pursue it for the fire station? Are there opportunities to reduce the budgets of other city departments without impacting services? Do city employees need merit and cost-of-living raises at a time when many have neither?
Council might have been delaying the inevitable in adopting a $64.7 million operating budget. The city’s budget is so lean, there’s no funding for two popular proposals from city residents: a no-kill animal shelter and operation of the tennis facility that’s under construction.
The city’s capital budget, used to fund construction projects, will be finalized at a later meeting, giving council members one last opportunity to consider the tax increase. The council has about 45 days to decide on a slight tax increase to build the fire station and a parking deck for the Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center.
Interestingly, taxpayers were promised support for public safety, the no-kill shelter, the tennis courts and the parking deck during recent elections. We hope all council members will keep their promises and follow through. If the money’s not there, they will have to decide to wait another year or proceed with a tax increase.
The city’s most pressing need revolves around safety. It cannot be ignored. If residents and visitors feel safe, Florence will grow and prosper. Downtown development will work only if potential businesses see crowds and decide to invest in the vision of a vibrant city center.
“Although there’s never a good time to tax, the modest increases the city would see by my proposal are acceptable costs to avert the devastating increases that we will likely see in insurance premiums and continued increases in crime if we don’t do now what we should have done many years ago,” Wukela said. “We’ve got pretty good consensus that we need those policemen and that fire station, but the council has to really find the courage to raise the revenue necessary to do that.”
Florence has not built a new fire station in nearly three decades. The response time for the fire department should be three minutes. In reality, there are spots in the city that require a 10-minute trip. The lack of coverage will result in higher insurance costs for the city and its residents once risk-assessors catch up with the liability.
“The city of Florence was last rated many years ago at a very good ‘two’ level rating. Level ‘one’ is the best possible,” the mayor wrote in a Sunday op-ed column in the Morning News. “A current internal city study reveals that if the rating organization audited us today, our department would drop to a ‘four’ rating or worse; resulting in dramatic increases in insurance premiums for property owners within the city.
“Put simply, our current rating requires that our fire department must be capable of responding to a fire anywhere in the city within three minutes,” he wrote.
There should be no disagreement on the need for more police officers. Florence has one of the highest per-capita crime rates in the South. Adding 18 officers will not solve the problem overnight. But it will help fight gangs and possibly cut down on random crime.
“The police department has, for years now, warned that they are in need of increased manpower,” Wukela wrote. “Our failure to respond has resulted in increased crime, along with increases in frustration, fatigue and overtime hours for the existing police force.”
The mayor’s proposed millage increases are slight, but they are difficult to accept in a recession. He’s asking a 2.2-mill increase on property tax for the fiscal year 2009-10 and a 5.5-mill increase for fiscal year 2010-11. Those translate into no change for residents in 2009-10 and $1 per month per $100,000 property value for businesses. In 2010-11, residents would pay $1.08 per month on a $100,000 property. Businesses would pay an increase of $5 per month for every $100,000 in value.
A tax increase would be Florence’s first in 20 years. Symbolically, politicians are reluctant to be associated with one. Realistically, taxpayers cannot afford one — unless it’s absolutely necessary.
We’re not convinced it’s absolutely necessary at this point.

— Unsigned editorials represent the views of this newspaper. Editorial board members are Mark Laskowski (regional publisher), James Bennett (regional editor), Sam Bundy (sports editor), Kimberly Ginfrida (news editor), David Johnson (regional circulation director), Charles Tomlinson (Lake City News & Post editor) and Jackie Torok (metro editor).