Outraged by high taxes? Not in Sarasota

People all over Florida have had it with high taxes, right? Wrong. In Sarasota County on Tuesday, voters extended a 1-cent sales tax increase for county government and local schools by a 2-1 margin (66 to 34 percent). Read The Herald-Tribune story here.

Comments

A sign of support for replacing the property tax with increased sales tax...

Nice try. If folks are already paying it, they voting against a tax cut for themselves, not an increase.

"We've already been paying the tax all along," said voter Denny Williams. "It doesn't seem to be that big a deal to keep paying it."

A very misleading headline and spin… What’s next… “By an overwhelming majority, people elect to continue to drink water!”

I guess the people of Sarasota are happy with the services they've received for their penny so far. Just like the folks in Pinellas. Contrary to the GOP spin. Also contrary - it's not the same as an increase in the state sales tax, which would be administered by the state over which local citizens have very little say.

It must be those "tax and spend" liberals that all voted for Vern Buchanan????

Where are the missing 18,000 votes????

Why, as people in a voting republic don't you care????

You have a fraudulent sitting congressman, understandably, as you have come to know your new democratic congress, the house admin. committee within those walls, did NOTHING! Where is the outrage? Where is America?

Start helping Christine Jennings who has learned the truth, and continues to fight for that truth. Create a visual aspect of support, one that cannot be kept hidden, behind the curtain of electronic vote "tabulation" which continues under our state law. Visual support, one actually seen, cannot be denied!
Start helping Christine Jennings!

11:14 no different than the fraud in Washington state...guess it all evens out in the end.

11:14 In the interest of Democracy, I hope they spend some of that Penny money to buy new voting machines and pay for election oversight. It does appear that more DEMs may live in Sarasorta than the Jennings results would indicate.

This confirms that Jennings should have won. A bunch of ninnies voting for higher taxes would never support a republican over a democrat.

I think the bigger story in yesterday's Sarasota voting, was voters' overwhelmingly support for anti-growth super majority measures that will make things more difficult for development in the future.

Hometown Democracy supporters and opponents surely got a wake up call yesterday in Sarasota county.

I AGREE, WE SHOULD RAISE THE SALES TAX 2.5% & ELIMINATE PROPERTY TAXES.

EVERYONE SHOULD HELP PAY FOR SERVICES.

BEST WAY TO FIX PROBLEM.

[Tim A]

2.5% may be a little high. If we could get a state mandated sales tax increase of 1.15% it would be sufficient to finally get the creeps that that live property tax free and use the most service to finally pay their fair share of the service burden. If my propery taxes go up again it will be enough to pay 1/8th of my salary for a year. Its getting rediculous, especially when you live down the street from someone who has ten times the land that I have and pays 1/4 of the taxes because he chooses to live in a mobile home and has two stinking cows. Its time that everyone paid their fair share. You could also obtain additional revenue from cigaretts booze and tourist and cut spending further. Why make the state's property tax paying citizens the target for the majority of all revenue. I bet if you checked, the homeowners in this state receive less of the services provided by municple, county and state resources than do the people receiving subsidized housing, childcare and healthcare(medicaid) that pay nothing...please give us a break before we all have to take another morgage just to pay our taxes.
Another thing is that after an elderly person reaches lets say 80 years of age and has been a resident paying taxes for at least half his life or has served his country he shouldn't have to pay any kind of taxes because he has already paid his dues to society. Our legislature has got it backwards.

There was no "overwhelming" support for taxes or anything else here. The politicians knew to put this on the ballot when no major elections were being held so that a majority of only ten per cent of the electorate would decide.

Sarasotans got what they deserved, but I can't conclude with certainty that it was exactly what they wanted.

12:00...Good points.

12:00 Kind of like the GOP scraping to get tax reform on the Jan 29th ballot when they figured there'd be less of a DEM turnout?