Miami-Dade Commission to get story on taxing districts

Miami-Dade Commissioners will get be told Tuesday that the issue discovered earlier this year where special taxing districts were not paying what they should — either paying higher or lower than what they were assessed — has been taken care of. Everything has been reviewed and adjusted.

All good now. You can move on.

Nothing to see here.

Well, excuse me if I reach for a magnifying glass. Because something is missing.

Commissioners learned in June that more than 100,000 property owners were paying too little or too much in special assessments that paid for additional lighting, security or grounds maintenance in their neighborhoods. During a meeting where Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez admitted that some people had been overtaxed, the commissioners asked for an audit of all special taxing districts as well as a report of how that happened and how it would be rectified.

The memo from Deputy Mayor Alina Hudak, director of the ill-combined public works and waste management department, says that the review found two accounts that were actually untouched since 2003, with $920,000 and $1.4 million in them.

Again, money that this administration finds by opening a drawer. How is it possible the county lost track of $2.5 million of our tax dollars?

Those are in addition of other, multiple surplus funds found within special taxing district accounts. The surpluses total $1.7 million, of which a little more than $500K, or about a third, is in a Hammock Lakes security guard district.

And, of course, there are negative balances (though the surpluses are way bigger). Most of those, or about 40 percent, are lighting districts (for a total of about $110,000). They are followed by maintenance districts, of which 32% have a negative balance and security districts, of which 24% have a negative balance. A special taxing district in Miami Lakes accounts for more than half of the lighting negative balances.

So, since services were never interrupted, are we to assume that homeowners in Hammock Lakes paid for the street lights in Miami Lakes?

“That’s what I want to know,” said Commissioner Juan Zapata, who doesn’t think that the report does enough to address how the county will repay the monies that have been overcharged to some STD homeowners.

“I’m not buying the story,” Zapata said of the Hudak memo and the 97-page final audit report that was made available to commissioners late Monday. “They wait til the last minute, and when we are about to discuss the budget.”

“For two years I’ve been asking questions about this stuff and they’ve been telling me everything was fine,” said Zapata, whose district includes the overpaying Hammock Lakes district.

The memo from Hudak states that there is no evidence to suggest monies were transferred to or from the general fund. But that was never the question. Not really. The real concern was that the monies from the different and independent, individual special taxing districts had been comingled and was being mostly spent on staff.

And the memo doesn’t address that at all.

“This memo, this report doesn’t say how we’re giving a bunch of people reimbursements for whatever money they were overcharged and it doesn’t say where that money is coming from,” Zapata said. “If the county overcharged, then the county should be putting money back into the special taxing districts to reimburse them.”

The memo does talk about “reconciling and distributing” the $920,000 security guard surplus funds in the first quarter of 2016. But it doesn’t say how it will do that or where that money will come from. Is it sitting in another drawer somewhere?

“The report doesn’t tell you who got screwed and who was overpaying,” Zapata said. “I’ve asked who was held accountable for this. ‘Oh a bunch of people,’ I’m told ‘Oh don’t worry. People are getting their money back so let’s move forward.'”

And what really worries him is that this may not be an isolated incident.

“I refuse to believe that this same lack of oversight doesn’t exist in other parts of the county,” Zapata said.

In other words, how many other drawers are there?

The report doesn’t say that either.

Juan Zapata, special taxing districts

Miami-Dade Commission to get story on taxing districts added by Ladra on September 1, 2015
View all posts by Ladra →