Palm Beach County Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits gave Wellington the “Just Plain Ugly Award” for proposing a tax rate increases in 2015.
While speaking at the Economic Forum of Palm Beach County, Nikolits criticized plans to raise property taxes by 8.72 percent and assessments in the Acme Improvement District by 15 percent.
Property taxes in the area are expected to rise by 9.97 percent without any changes to the budget because of increased homes values, according to the Palm Beach Post.
“While the streets are being improved in Wellington, not everybody in Wellington is in the Acme water control district,” Nikolits told the forum, adding that “those folks” in the Lake Worth and Pine Tree districts “don’t have to pay to have the streets improved in Wellington, even though they’re Wellington residents — but everyone else in Wellington has to pay.”
“I don’t know if somebody’s going to decide they want to challenge that or not,” he added, “but it would seem to me that it’s not particularly a smart thing for a municipality to do to single out residents.” [PBP] – Christopher Cameron