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By early 2006, Harold and Barbara Polsky were paying $8,000 a year in taxes and insurance alone on their home in Port Richey, on the Pasco County coast — more than their mortgage payment.
To make matters worse, they were still fighting their insurance company over water damage from the 2004 storms. They had become citizen activists, even joining a protest trip to Tallahassee.
But in the end, they'd had enough. They were able to sell their house, and Harold was lucky enough to get a job transfer to the Roanoke, Va., area, where they live today.
"There are certain aspects of Florida that I really, really miss," Barbara Polsky says. "But this is a nice area. The people are nice. The scenery is beautiful." Deer play in their back yard.
Does she regret leaving Florida? Would she make the same decision all over again?
She does not hesitate. "Given the same conditions? Oh, yeah."
• • •
It's fair to say that the Aughts, or whatever we end up calling the first 10 years of this century, was not exactly the happiest decade in Florida and Tampa Bay history.
Actually, it's fair to say that this decade knocked some of the bloom off Florida's orange blossom.
We careened from the disastrous and embarrassing 2000 election to the effects of terrorism and war.
We were hit by storm after storm in 2004, the terrible foursome of Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne. For an encore, the 2005 storm season used up the whole alphabet and we had to resort to Greek letters.
We lost our homeowners insurance or paid through the nose for it, even as property tax collections skyrocketed across the state — a double whammy that led to voter revolt and a series of quick-fix political solutions that didn't work, despite the governor's famous promise that rates would "drop like a rock."
Last — from the frying pan to the fire! — the national housing and financial bust hit especially hard in Florida, a state uniquely dependent upon construction and growth. We went upside-down on our mortgages; we couldn't sell our way out of it — and by decade's end, Florida had 10 percent-plus unemployment, its highest in 34 years.
Inexorably, the population and migration numbers started to turn. By 2007, the growth trend was definitely slowing. By 2008, newspapers were running articles with advice on how to choose a mover to go back north. Growth was at its lowest rate in 30 years.
Finally, in August 2009, the University of Florida announced what a lot of people had been suspecting: For the first time in 62 years, the state actually lost population for the year. That estimate was for just a sliver of a loss, 58,000 people, but it still represented a historic, once-unthinkable reversal.
To recap: tough decade. Read rest of column from St. Petersburg Times |
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