I was talking to a friend recently when he made a statement that surprised me, since he is a fairly conservative individual. He said people in Florida don't want to pay any taxes but want to get all the benefits of states where people pay more in taxes. He's right, of course. We expect to have police and fire protection, public schools, trash picked up, etc. When Duval County Public Schools started claiming it would add an extra sales tax in order to rebuild schools, it got me to wondering how the schools got so bad that over a billion bucks are needed to fix them. Then I looked at my friend's property tax record online, and it was fairly clear.
