This is the time of year that beckons for a “list” column. I considered honoring the reader with a brief description of my 10 best golf shots of 2024. But even after consulting with my regular playing partners, I could come up with only four shots worthy of mention, two of which involved tee shots that ricocheted from tree limbs into the fairway. Next up was a list of my 10 best newspaper columns as rated by my family members. But they were all too busy.

Nothing depresses a newspaper columnist (even an amateur one) more than the frustration of seeing every idea trail leading to the same sign: Dead End. Perhaps this explains the seemingly odd compulsion to congratulate the executive director of the Seneca County Industrial Development Agency. Odd in that Executive Director Sarah Davis was portrayed in a recent FL Times article as being a bit discouraged at having provided financial aid to only one business in 2024. In IDA parlance, financial aid generally means property tax breaks (with a side order of sales tax and mortgage recording tax exemptions).

Even the best New Year’s resolution for 2025 will not change the grim reality that one property owner’s tax breaks become part of another property owner’s tax bills. This occasions a perhaps silly question. If the property taxes in a given jurisdiction are so onerous that a business (or, at least, a business blessed by the local IDA) cannot succeed without substantial relief from those........

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