Coral Gables Watch

Commissioners–Follow the Lead of Miami and Miami-Dade!

Both Miami and Miami-Dade County have held the line on taxes and demand serious elimination of staff and reductions in salaries. There is no turning back. That would leave Coral Gables as one of the most important cities that increase taxes in desperate times.  Coral Gables Commissioners should wake up to the concern of voters. I don’t think that voters will be passive and indifferent to 14%, 10% or even less property tax increases.

Hard Economic Message for the Commissioners

The following is from a story in the Miami Heraldquoting experts that Florida will lag behind the national economic recovery. Also, it seems that unemployment will not begin falling until 2010 for the U.S. and, perhaps, in Florida not fall until 2011. This means that house values will not start growing enough until at least 2012.

Hence, under the present scheme of the 2009-2010 budget Coral Gables property taxes will have to keep increasing for three more years during the slow comeback from the recession. This is the most optimistic scenario for the City Commission of Coral Gables.

“The recession is moderating in Florida. That’s undeniable,” said Chris Lafakis, an economist with MoodysEconomy.com.

But the continued housing crisis and worries that state population growth may have stalled — or even shrunk, as the University of Florida believes — could make the state a national laggard in an eventual rebound, he said.

“It will be very difficult for the economy to meaningfully recover and expand . . . in the absence of a stabilization in house prices,” Lafakis said.