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The snowblower from hell

The snowblower from hell

If you look back in the archive of this blog you will find a picture of an old snowblower sitting out on the front yard of a Palm Harbor house.

I figured the homeowners had put it out there as a sort of short-term joke and that the snowblower would disappear before long. But it’s still sitting out there and, in fact, the homeowners have dressed it up for Halloween, complete with a real creepy snowblower operator. Also, note the feet sticking out of the snowblower’s maw.
Don’t know if you can read the sign on the wall behind the snowblower, but it says “Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much.” These folks must take that motto seriously, at least the “Laugh Often” part.

Tags: North Pinellas County, Palm Harbor

Taste of Palm Harbor

One of the most enjoyable local events of the year is coming up this Sunday — the annual Taste of Palm Harbor, which will be held from noon to 6 p.m. in historic Old Downtown Palm Harbor, which is centered around Florida Avenue between Alt. 19 and County Road 1.

This year, 20 local restaurants will be taking part, offering samples of their best dishes in exchange for tickets that you buy for 50-cents each. Most of the dishes cost three to six tickets, but a few are a little more.

Half of the money raised goes to the restaurants; the other half goes to the sponsor, the Palm Harbor Women’s Club, which dispurses the money to such charities as the the Humane Society of North Pinellas, Hospice, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and a number of others.

This year a second event is piggybacking on the Taste of Palm Harbor. Palm Harbor Fire Rescue will be celebrating 50 years of service to the community at the same time. An open house will be held between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. at Station #66, 1123 Illinois Ave.

A fish fry will start at 11:30 a.m. and there will begames, rides, exhibits and an antique fire truck exhibition.

Tags: North Pinellas County, taste of Palm harbor

… And even more on taxes

 In my last post (about property taxes in Dunedin) I mentioned that Pinellas County property tax revenue will go up this year by $148 million simply because property values have gone up so much.

Now, Pinellas County has taken steps to reduce property taxes in response to pressure from county taxpayers.

Yesterday (that would be Tuesday, Sept. 19), county commissioners agreed to lower property tax rates to a level that hasn’t been seen since around 1990. The action came during a County Commission meeting that was attended by more than 250 taxpayers, some of them a bit irate.

The commission agreed to lower property taxes by 10.3 percent. Many of the taxpayers in attendance said they wanted even deeper cuts, but the commissioners said it was too late in the budget cycle to reduce taxes more than that. They said the state of Florida will have to get the message from angry taxpayers if property tax rates are to go down any more — the state has dealt with its own tax revenue problems by pushing a lot of revenue requirements down to the local level.

What the lower tax rate will mean is around $36 million less in revenue for Pinellas County. Commissioners say they will have to make budget cuts and make cuts in programs and staff to meet the new spending limits.

Still, the Pinellas County budget stands at $1.926 billion for 2007. That’s Billion, with a “B”.

Small business owners have been particularly hard-hit by increasing taxes. If you have a small business that owns property, you don’t enjoy the benefits of the annual cap on property assessments that apply to homeowners who occupy the homes they own.

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If you’d like to see what area people are saying about taxes, go to www.itsyourtimes.com and scroll down to “taxes are killing us.” Itsyourtimes.com is a blog run by the St. Petersburg TIMES.

Tags: North Pinellas County, taxes