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Highlands Today

County May Raise Low-Income Seniors' Homestead Exemption

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By JIM KONKOLY

Highlands Today

Published: October 8, 2008

SEBRING - In a 4-1 vote Tuesday, Highlands County commissioners took the first step toward raising the low-income senior citizens exemption on a homestead home from $5,000 to $15,000.

The next step will be a public hearing, which will be scheduled before late November.

The current exemption for low-income seniors, set in 2001, is $5,000 off the taxable value of their homestead home, for a tax decrease of $35. Senior homeowners qualify if they have an annual household income of $24,916.

According to tax records, 1,686 senior homeowners receive this property tax break.

Commissioner Barbara Stewart cast the lone vote against raising this tax break.

"What it boils down to for me is a simple thing, and it's fairness," she said. "I do not believe it's fair to carve out one group for special treatment.

Commissioner Guy Maxcy said he favors raising this exemption to $25,000, and said the commissioners should have done that several years ago. State law allows a county to set this special tax break anywhere from zero to $50,000 off the taxable value of a homestead home.

Maxcy said low-income senior homeowners, mostly on fixed incomes, deserve help because they often are the "folks at the bottom of the (financial) totem pole."

"I just think of that person sitting there thinking how they're going to buy their (prescription) drugs for the coming week or how they're going to buy food for the coming week," he said.

Commissioner Andy Jackson supported raising the exemption to $15,000 but said he "wasn't impressed" by arguments from several seniors that this tax break should be raised because county spending includes raises for employees and funding for many projects.

"What did impress me," he said, "is the fixed income situation. It's got to be a desperate feeling if you're on a fixed income and you can't do anything about it."

When he spoke, commissioners were discussing raising the exemption to $25,000, and Jackson said he didn't know if the resulting tax savings of about $200 a year would be much help to low-income senior homeowners.

Bob Street, a senior who argued for raising the exemption to $25,000, said any increase in this tax break will help seniors struggling to make ends meet.

"If you never have been on hard times, you don't know what $200 can mean," Street said. A $200 tax benefit, he said, could make the difference between buying medicine or gas or food, or going without those necessary goods.

Commissioner Don Bates said he had "mixed feelings" on this issue.

But, he added, since several seniors have been asked for an increase in this tax break for about a year, "One thing I am clear on is we need to do something today."

Bates made the motion to hold the mandatory public hearing on the proposal to increase the exemption from $5,000 to $15,000. He said he heard that many people who wanted to be at the commission meeting to speak on this topic could not make it to the Highlands County Government Center.

People who can't attend the county commission meetings should call commissioners to give their views on this issue, Bates said.

To take effect for 2009, commissioners have to adopt a change in this tax break before Dec. 1.

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