Entries Tagged 'District 48' ↓

Florida Legislative District 48 was listed in the current edition of Florida Trend Magazine as one of the Hot State Races in 2008.

Happy New Year! This new year should be one of the happiest we have had in seven years.

But before you ring in the new year, maybe you can help me reach a very important fundraising goal? The last fundraising quarter of 2007 ends tonight at Midnight. I am $145 away from reaching our goal set for this quarter, $415 away from reaching an important mark for the campaign, and just over $800 away from reaching the same mark for money on hand.

Can you help?

Simply visit the contribution page and make a very secure credit card donation.

Thank you all so much. Happy New Year… And while we’re on that subject, my resolution for 2008 is to go to Tallahassee as your new Democratic State Representative in Pinellas!

Ladies and gentlemen, the following is an invitation from from Carl Zimmermann:

Dear Fellow Democrats,

I believe you will find the next North Pinellas Democratic Club meeting this Wednesday to be very interesting and different. Unlike most meetings, we will be watching a documentary titled American Blackout. I first saw this movie at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006. It’s about the 2000 Presidential election and what took place in Florida to assure that George W. Bush’s victory. I believe you will be shocked at what is revealed.

There are many “documentaries" made these days that can often be careless with facts and amount to not much more than propaganda pieces. I think you will agree with what you see.

It also covers the Cynthia McKinney campaign. You may remember Cynthia was a congresswoman from Atlanta who the Bush administration ordered to be "taken out" and the strategy the Republicans used to take her out of a heavily Democratic area.

Visit American Blackout’s official site.

The meeting starts at 7:00 PM at the Countryside Library this Wednesday (September 12). See you there.

Carl Zimmermann

I had hoped to have this letter to the editor I wrote published by the St. Pete Times over the last few days.

The impasse this week in Tallahassee between the House plan and the Senate plan requires a brand new plan. The House plan proposes radical change in how we are taxed by doing a partial swap with sales tax and the Senate plan takes a more conservative approach keeping property tax in place, but changing the rules for escalation. While both offer savings, neither really focuses on the real problem. Therefore, neither effectively offers a long term solution. Both are likely to blow up in our faces in the near future and may compound the inequity in our current system.

The Senate plan will ultimately cost the homesteaded owner more money by raising the 3% cap to 10% per year if they move. The House plan is just plain reckless by depending on voters to throw out our current safeguards like Save-Our-Homes cap and then hoping they approve two sales tax increases. There’s also a very likely possibility that their figures are inaccurate (people on a committee put together by former governor Jeb Bush estimated it would take 4 – 5% sales tax to offset the difference) and we could be faced with increasing the sales tax again down the road.

Nobody likes paying taxes, but we all know we need to support services like police, fire, emergency response, education, parks, and the other communal services government provides that we all benefit from. The problem is that with the rapid escalation in property values the last three years, those that weren’t protected by the Save-Our homes 3% cap in assessment have seen their taxes double and triple. And now that values are dropping in the market, they won’t drop in the property record books.

Businesses, investors, second-home owners and ultimately renters of all those properties are facing financial ruin. So, why isn’t the focus on relieving them? Sure, both plans give them some relief, but both plans focus on giving more benefits to those already protected by the cap.

Here’s a better plan:

1) Roll back all appraisals to 2003 levels and then increase all of them by 3% per year (a minimal amount to cover inflation). Then extend the 3% appraisal cap to all properties. Taxes are like a three legged stool. Appraised value, millage and budget make up the legs and to keep them balanced the legs have to be adjusted. If the 3% cap was extended to all property, local budgets would have to be adjusted and once they were established at what our local officials feel is essential, millage would be set to balance everything out. This would accomplish what we all want which is for our local governments to explain why they need more money instead of simply getting a windfall during prosperous times. Our local municipalities need not suffer tremendous cutbacks under this plan, they simply need to show us accountability.

2) This plan would not require portability of the Save-Our homes cap because we would all be getting the cap. It would, however, over time, balance out the inequities between similar homes as more homes are sold.

3) Let’s abolish the unbelievably unfair practice of taxing property at the highest possible use instead of the current use.

Three simple changes and a permanent, long term solution. No need to gamble with our property, our security or our emotions. If our representatives were to pass a bill like this, they could have time this week to re-address the problems with property insurance.

Well… no regrets. In a district that had 13,500 more Republicans than Democrats, I got 21,934 votes to Peter Nehr’s 23,419. However, more than half of the eligible voters didn’t vote and about 20,000 voters that were expected to vote, based on the last Florida gubernatorial election, didn’t vote either.  We will be looking at these numbers this week and trying to make sense out of where we lost votes.  While nobody has a crystal ball, we will be able to see what precincts we won and what we lost, how that correlates to our efforts in those precincts and, most important, who didn’t show up – Democrats, Republicans, independents, women, men, old, young, etc.  We knew the numbers we had to hit with Republicans and independents and we felt we had them about a month before.

So, I thank every one of you that supported me.  Your confidence that I could win was accurate, your emails and phone calls were inspiring and moving. Everybody is asking if I’ll do it again, that I now have name recognition, a reputation of integrity and substance, and am also known by the unions and lobbyists.  It is tempting.  Everyone that devoted major chunks of their lives to this campaign wants to start up again.  The reality though is that my opponent will be an incumbent.  He raised $300,000 to my $37,000 this cycle and as an incumbent he will have half a million come 2008.  He will also not have to fight off three opponents in a primary as he did during this election.  He will almost certainly get the endorsement from both local newspapers.  These are daunting obstacles.  We will be watching what he does and preparing for the possibilities.  But the answer is uncertain right now.  As far as other races, there aren’t many. But we will be exploring.

As far as how I feel, I feel at ease.  It has been a very intense two years. I didn’t realize the intensity and speed that we were moving at until we stopped. Suddenly, I realized it’s fall with winter and Christmas around the corner.  My orange tree has fruit and I never even smelled the blossoms.  All the bulbs were burnt out in my outdoor garage lights and my son moved back home to his old bedroom. I have to weed my garden and I have a lot of cleaning and organizing to do.  This whole experience has changed me. I learned that you make more friends by making fewer enemies, to be a bridge means learning how to speak without being a divider. And most of all, I learned what my good friend Joe Pinner, the voice of South Carolina TV at WIS TV for over 45 years has been telling my students every year: It’s all about integrity. I have always had the philosophy that I expect nothing from anybody and that I appreciate anything anyone does for me. Some people have said they wished they had done more. Well, hold on to that thought and thanks for everything you did.