City of Cocoa Plunders County Taxpayers Through Redevelopment District
April 29, 2008 by Scott Ellis
By Scott Ellis
The move by the City of Cocoa Redevelopment District to buy property from the City of Cocoa through inflated prices without appraisals highlights the shenanigans of Community Redevelopment Areas (CRAs) and why they should be ABOLISHED.
Many may not pick up on the plunder accomplished by Cocoa. Redevelopment Districts get to withold the increasing tax revenue of their area from both City and County governments. With Brevard County shelling out many millions of dollars to these CRAs, the remaining taxpayers end up getting billed for the difference. While that is bad enough, Cocoa has now fine-tuned the pilfering of all taxpayers by using the wealth of the CRA (millions based on a CRA 20+ years old) to sell City assets to itself!
The purchase of unappraised City of Cocoa properties by the Cocoa CRA represents nothing more than the transfer of countywide tax dollars into the City of Cocoa coffers. While I do not know if CRA rules require appraisals, we will certainly find out at the office.
The City of Cocoa, if it wanted the properties back on the tax rolls, could simply have sold them on the open market. However, by manipulating both the selling City and buying CRA, Cocoa gets to dictate both the selling and buying prices. Like many CRAs with lots of money and no mission, artificial mission creep sets in and they become tools to keep all the county taxes within their porkbarrell boundaries, expecting other citizens to pick up the difference.
Abolishing all of the CRAs would bring millions of tax dollars back to the county and the cities, eliminate the Tammany Hall politics of the CRAs, and take taxpayer dollars away from these fiscal sleight-of-hand operations. The sooner the better before other CRAs and their City Councils wise up and start manipulating more asset ‘sales’ to siphon money into city coffers by the missionless CRAs.
Nice catch by the Florida Today on the story. With all the various investigative stories aroudn one would think the newspaper is trying to appear to be somewhat, well, investigative!
I hadn’t seen the story on this one, Scott, except here.(which proves I trust this site more than Florida Toady [sic]).
Why does this not surprise me, though, that if the County can fleece its people for EELs land and get away with it, the City of Cocoa learns from the best and finds ways to take our money as well?
CRAs should be abolished — and quickly! If something needs “redevelopment”, let the neighborhood figure out how to do it, what to put there, and how to finance it. That lets them have an investment in their area and gives pride of place and belonging. Maybe some neighborhoods doing things the right way would give others the incentive to step up and take responsibility for their own neighborhoods and for taking care of it themselves.