- September 12, 2024
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Dear Editor:
My least favorite days of the year are the days I succumb to the annual extortion by government via local property tax bill, filing federal tax return and the daily dings of the passive-aggressive Sales Tax — I literally cringe.
To further my own dismay, over the years I have taken it upon myself to actually research what these different bodies of government decide to spend my money on. For example, $1.6 million was spent from National Science Foundation grants to walk lizards on a treadmill (It’s true. Look it up). It’s not so crazy to know how the federal government has run up a debt totaling $35+ trillion with that kind of insane spending.
At the state level, I remember the budget being about $80 billion or so in 2018 after 170 years since Florida's founding. In less than a decade since, it’s crossed over $115 billion. A substantial increase in such a short time.
On to county, the School Board has an interesting stat, with a budget of about $1.2 billion and an enrollment of about 57k students, the “cost per student” this year is about $21k. Yet the state’s Personalized Education Program (“money follows student”) allocation is only 1/3 of that. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
Last, but certainly not least, Ormond Beach. As regular readers with exceptional memories may recall from a couple of my previous Letters to the Editor regarding public landscaping a few years ago, there can be substantial and ongoing cost savings, as well as esthetic enhancement, by going from high-maintenance grass landscaping to Florida-native. Not only does this make fiscal sense, but safety and environmental sense as well.
Joe Hannoush
Ormond Beach
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