By now, you should have gotten your property tax bills. Pretty impressive, huh? They have some pretty creative people in the budget department at the County.

The constitution limits counties to 10 mills. That ought not be a difficult limit, except for a free-spending county like Volusia. That is why they have found a bunch of ways to get around it.

The first step is to break things out so they are not included in the general fund millage. If you move a couple of mills out into a fire fund, the general millage appears to decrease. Same for libraries and the sheriff. There is a separate “not being in the city” tax, too. I added up all the county millages on my tax bill, and it came to 11.3960.

The next trick is to redesignate taxes as not being taxes. For instance, you might think that it rains on pretty much everyone. Well, in Volusia, it does not, and where there is rain you pay an assessment for the “special benefit.”

Garbage collection should be for the health and welfare of the whole community. Instead there is another assessment.

The great thing is that the county does not even have to count things like rain and garbage as taxes. That makes the 10-mill cap more illusion than protection. Counting them would add another 9.03168 mills to my tax bill.

Now, they have a new trick. They make someone else levy taxes for them, so that the taxes count against those other entities’ millage limits instead of the county. For instance, the West Volusia Hospital Authority millage just took a big jump, but the money goes to the county.

Let me explain. Here in West Volusia, we no longer have a public hospital. The West Volusia Hospital Authority gave it away more than 20 years ago, and even the residual agreements have long

expired. No public hospital means that we receive no Medicaid money.

However, the county pretends that we receive Medicaid money, and charges the authority for our alleged share of it. It amounts to several millions of dollars. This shows up as increased millage for West Volusia taxpayers, but does not count against the county’s millage cap.

That is their main point. I can tell that they are not thinking about mathematics over at the county — because they are doing everything they can to not count to 10.

— Andrews is a DeLand-area attorney and a longtime government critic. For purposes of the column, he finds it convenient that there is so much government to criticize.