St. Petersburg Property Taxes

St. Petersburg Property Taxes have doubled in 6 years with collections of $103.4 Million planned for 2007.
The City Council refuses to cut tax rates enough to keep tax collections fair even though they have the power to do so.
The City of St. Petersburg operated with only about $50 million/year of taxes from 1993-2000. Since 2000, Tax collections have gone up every year and now are double!
The City Council has ignored the pleas of citizens to return to reasonable tax collections.
They give a Token Cut in a tax rate while still collecting higher taxes every year.
They issue "happy talk" that the city has the lowest tax rate in 20 years when we have the HIGHEST TAX COLLECTIONS IN CITY HISTORY!
The City Council can simply raise its income by the stroke of a pen while the rest of us have to work harder and could never double our income in six years simply by voting for it like the City Council does! Working Taxpayers would love to simply vote themselves a pay raise like the council votes themselves more tax revenue to waste every year!
It is time to send a message to the City Council: CUT TAXES OR FACE THE INFORMED CITIZENS WHO KNOW YOUR RECORD!
At the city's website, the 2007 budget is not even offered for public review in any easy to find way so we can see where the money will go. Call your Mayor and City Council and tell them to put it on their website along with past budgets at http://www.stpete.org/budget.htm. They only thing you will find there is the "happy talk" budget that doesn't even mention its total tax collections! Why is it not prominately displayed on the budget page? What are they hiding?