For Seat 3 at the Beach, the Tattler endorses Jacob Dascomb

This paper endorses Jacob Dascomb for St. Augustine Beach Commission Seat 3.

The reason is taxes, and it is not a slogan. It is in the city’s own ordinance.

St. Augustine Beach adopted a Fiscal Year 2027 budget of $15,542,456 and left its rate at 2.5000 mills. The city’s own ordinance records that flat rate as 3 percent above the rolled-back rate, which is the rate that would have raised the same money as the year before.

That is what a tax increase is. Florida has a word for it, and the city used the word itself.

A rate held still while property values climb is not restraint. It is more money, collected quietly, described as nothing having changed.

What the candidate says, in his own words

Mr. Dascomb runs a section of his site headed Lower the Tax Burden. He writes that the commission has voted to increase property taxes every year for twelve consecutive years, that it added a new stormwater tax of about $200 on a typical single-family home, and that taxes levied have risen 172 percent in twelve years while, in his phrase, the city “doesn’t seem to have gotten much better.”

Those figures are his. This paper has not verified the twelve years, the 172 percent or the $6.57 million in reserves he cites, and does not assert them here.

What this paper has verified is the direction. One sentence of his needs no checking at all, because it is a position rather than a number: tax property “for what is absolutely necessary to provide the essential services that make our community better, nothing more.”

We agree with that sentence, and it is the whole of why this endorsement exists.

What the record says she did

On Sept. 8 the commission met to set the property tax operating millage. The city’s own minutes record Commissioner George present, attending by Zoom.

The Finance Director gave the commission three numbers. The previously proposed rate was 2.6700 mills. The rolled-back rate, the one that would have raised the same money as last year, was 2.4273 mills. The rate on the table that evening was the 2.5000 they went on to keep.

The City Attorney read Ordinance 2026-09 in full. It was moved, seconded, and passed unanimously. The budget ordinance went the same way minutes later.

Unanimous, with her recorded present, is a vote, and it is hers.

Two things belong here that help her case, and leaving them out would be the cheap version of this argument. Staff brought the rate down from the 2.6700 that had been proposed, and the Finance Director told Commissioner Samora that no capital projects were cut to do it. There were roughly $128,000 of insurance savings and no new staff positions.

It is still above the rollback. 2.5000 against 2.4273 is three percent more of your money than last year took, and the city wrote that number in its own ordinance.

Public comment was opened at that meeting and nobody spoke. The rate was set in a room where no resident said a word, in the twenty-six minutes between the gavel and adjournment.

What the record does not say, and why

It does not say why. The final budget hearing was Sept. 24 and the city has posted no minutes for it at all.

So we can tell you what she voted for on the eighth and not one word of what she said about it on the twenty-fourth.

We asked her. On Oct. 25 this paper sent Commissioner George six written questions, the same six it sent her opponent, in the same message at the same minute, with a deadline of 5 p.m. on Thursday. One of them asked for a single budget line she would raise and a single one she would cut, with figures.

An officeholder who votes to take three percent more and will not spend ten minutes explaining why has told you something, and she has told it to you on purpose. The complaint this country was founded on was not the size of a tax. It was being taxed by people who would not answer for it.

So we report what she did. We cannot report why, because she did not say. That silence is hers.

We are also not saying Mr. Dascomb has a record. He does not. He has never held the seat, which is the ordinary condition of a challenger and is not a mark against him. What he has is a written position, which is more than this paper could find anywhere for the seat’s current holder.

The answers that did not come

Neither candidate answered. Not a word came back.

The questions went to both of them on Oct. 25, in one message, at the same minute. The deadline was 5 p.m. Thursday, and it passed with nothing from either of them, because the mailbox was working the whole time and other mail kept arriving in it.

This paper said on Oct. 25 that it would print both sets of answers in full, side by side, before the polls closed. There are no answers to print, so it prints the fact instead, about both of them: asked the same six questions at the same moment, Jacob Dascomb and Undine George each said nothing.

The two silences do not weigh the same, and it would be dishonest to pretend they do.

Mr. Dascomb has never held the seat, and he has no vote to account for. His silence to this paper leaves his own website as his record, and that website takes a plain position on taxes in his own words, which is more than the incumbent has put anywhere a voter can read.

Ms. George cast a documented vote to set a rate three percent above rollback, and then would not spend ten minutes saying why. That is not a challenger choosing to keep his powder dry. That is an officeholder who will not answer for a thing she has already done.

So the endorsement rests on what the record holds, and not on what either of them told us, because neither told us anything.

An endorsement is this paper’s opinion and it is the publisher’s to hold. The news story beside it is held to a separate standard, and it says plainly that this paper failed to print either candidate’s name for four days while people were already voting.

Vote for whichever of them you think will take less of your money for better reasons. We think that is Jacob Dascomb.