You told me once you believed in God. The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I’d like to see him for a minute if I could. What would you say to him? Well, I think I’d just tell him. I’d say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there’s just one thing I’d like to know. And he’ll say: What’s that? And then I’m goin to ast him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldnt put any part of it together. Suttree smiled. What do you think he’ll say? The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I dont believe he can answer it, he said. I don’t believe there is a answer. — Cormac McCarthy
What I Don’t Like About Florida By My Friend Al
Specifically, Hernando County on the central Gulf Coast. Where we both live.
Perhaps out our last days.
We are two old men and we know some things because we have seen some things. Used to be another retiree, think Three Wise Men, but Howard moved North because Florida was getting too expensive. New neighbor down the street moved back to West Virginia because the people there are more cordial and less judgmental. But that’s another story.
Here’s Al now.
• Bad Drivers – Old people with little eyesight and big cars driving way past when they should have hung it up. Heavily medicated with slow reflexes. Of course, they have to keep driving because of …
• Bad public transportation – It’s hard to route buses through suburban sprawl, which results from …
• Poor planning – Not to worry, the HCBOCC [Hernando County Board of County Commissioners] never met a variance they didn’t like. Especially if it resulted in more suburban sprawl.
• Bad roads – A large portion of Hernando County roads are unpaved. Another goodly portion is in need of repair. The only roads that get maintained are state roads.
• Lax enforcement of driver license regulations – There are lots of people that shouldn’t be getting their licenses renewed. Proper enforcement would require much more and much better public transportation. Or they would need a lot more senior housing, which people would protest NIMBY.
• Slow drivers in the left lane – apparently, there is no law in Florida requiring drivers to keep right except when passing. They just meander wherever they want. Love the right turns from the left lane.
• Horrible auto insurance – See all of the above. The highest item on my statement of coverage is …
• Uninsured Motorist – I have to provide coverage for drivers who don’t have insurance, mostly because they can’t afford it. I guarantee you unlicensed drivers are still on the road. Instead of enforcing the law, the state finds it is more cost-effective to penalize law-abiding drivers.
• Property insurance rates and availability – Politicians have had their thumb on the insurance market forever. They keep the rates low for high-risk properties (read waterfront). These expensive homes are inhabited by rich people who contribute to political campaigns. Residents inland pay higher rates to subsidize the beach crowd. The state underwrites Citizens Insurance, and does so with a surcharge on all other insurance policies.
• Citizens Insurance has it backwards – As the coverage of last resort, its premiums should be higher than all other options. But they are not, they are lower. This low-ball coverage has driven many reputable companies out of the state. However, Citizens provides a service to the home builders by providing coverage to new buyers, so they can obtain mortgages.
• Crappy Lawyers – In the middle of all this insurance mess (home and auto), are a large group of crappy lawyers. You see them on TV all the time. I saw one today that said: “Don’t believe your doctor if he says you are all right to return to work. We have doctors that will support your claim.”
These lawyers file worthless claims because they know two things. First, the insurance company will settle if the claim is less than the cost of taking it to court. Second, the insurance company is required to pay the plaintiff’s attorney fees and costs. The plaintiff, the person committing insurance fraud, gets a small payment, the big bucks go to the law firm.
• The most REGRESSIVE taxes in the country – State funding almost entirely based on sales tax. The most regressive form of taxing that weighs most heavily on the poor (lots of examples, just ask). The only thing worst than a sales tax, which is a flat rate tax, is a fee. In Florida, the tag for that sparkling brand-new Caddy is the same as for that ten-year old Chevy, loaded down with patina.
• Uncivilized Real Estate Taxes – Hernando County gets its funding from three sources. First, they get an add-on to the regressive sales tax noted above. Next, they have tax revenue from real estate taxes. This is a semi-regressive tax because it is based on fixed rate on a variable base – assessed value. In an incredible effort to keep the rate as low as possible (Is there a Republican trophy for the County with the lowest rate?) the HCBOCC transferred items from the general fund to a flat fee.
Emergency services is $250 per property parcel, trash collecting is another $200 fee. These fees are the same whether your assessed value is $50,000 or $500,000. They have increased the tax burden on the lower-valued home and decreased it for the rich guy. They have also circumvented the homestead exemption. The County’s third source of funds is…
• Impact fees – When new homes and businesses are added to the County the builder/developer should be responsible for all costs associated with their project. Increased traffic means new roads (paved) and improvements to existing roads. Three- and four-bedroom homes almost guarantee children needing schools, which should be provided. All public services and utilities need to be expanded. Impact fees should cover all of these costs. Variable impact fees would also allow the County to influence where development occurs.
• No reliable news source for the County – the closest thing we have is internet social media, not very credible.
• I miss small local food outlets – Bakeries, delis, butcher, etc. [Not a bookstore anywhere in the county.]
• No sense of community – Hernando County is just a group of people from other places: NY, NJ, PA, OH, … Ask someone where they are from and they never say Hernando County. They will tell you some town in another state. [Also, e.g., Iowa, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Maine, California even, in my neighborhood.]
• No live-aboard – Strange that a state with the longest coastline and numerous marinas almost universally prohibits boat owners from living on their vessels. [Al used to live on a boat.]
As I think of more, I’ll send them along.
Thank you, Al.
For me, the worst part about Florida is the hypocrisy. Selling swampland to suckers is just part of the state’s DNA.
Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, Howard is wearing many layers of winter clothing and happy about it.
Selling Swampland To Out-Of-State Suckers Is A Florida Tradition
In many ways, Florida has been built around the “people-importation industry.”
In what Journalist and author Michael Grunwald, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise, calls “a bewildering dreamscape forged by greed, flimflam, and absurdly grandiose visions that somehow stumbled into heavily populated realities,” the attempted transformation of swampland into promised land is a potent metaphor.
“The story of the repeated efforts to tame the Everglades—and the often deadly results of those attempts is a particularly cautionary tale in these days of increasingly violent natural disasters,” says American Experience executive producer Mark Samels.
In the early decades of the 20th century, a Floridian version of manifest destiny took hold, combining belief in man’s ability to improve dangerous and diseased swampland—ignorant of the ecological and environmental benefits of the Everglades—and a desire to make money. Charles Ponzi, the swindler whose name became synonymous with unsustainable business ventures, had a sideline in the ’20s selling lots “near Jacksonville” that turned out to be 65 miles away.
Visionaries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries—such as Hamilton Disston, who bought four million acres with plans to drain, dredge, and redevelop, Governor Napoleon Broward, who proclaimed “water is the common enemy” as he pushed forward policies to transform South Florida, and Henry Flagler, who ran a rail line south to the Florida Keys—reshaped the landscape.
This was an era that spawned neighborhoods and towns such as Progresso and Utopia, when Miami was marketed as a tropical wonderland to northerners who quickly purchased swampland real estate, sight unseen. “I have never bought land by the gallon,” one buyer remarked. Hundreds of thousands of new arrivals would transform a farming state into something radically different.
Creative, in some cases duplicitous, advertising and marketing helped sell Florida to the rest of the nation (famous developer Carl Fischer hung a billboard in Times Square that proclaimed “It’s June in Miami”). Writer Marjory Stoneman Douglas, namesake of the Parkland High School, whose gorgeous prose would make the case to preserve the Everglades and establish a national park, spent time penning brochures for new developments.
While the original land boom trailed off during the Depression era, Florida’s growth has only gained momentum, and the struggle to balance progress with preservation has become more important. Now the state with the country’s third-largest population, and a pivotal point on the election map, is still growing and sprawling with new subdivisions and residents.
The state’s biggest agricultural industry isn’t citrus, it’s sod and palms trees, many destined for newly manicured lawns.
