The Flagler Beach City Commission is set to vote next week on a proposed budget that would raise the city’s property tax slightly and equate to a 13 percent tax increase for non-homesteaded property owners like businesses and renters.
Flagler Beach is taking almost the same approach as Palm Coast and Flagler County, two governments that are maintaining their tax rates flat, but passing on an equally steep tax increase to non-homesteaded property owners. The increase will be offset in part by school taxes. The school tax rate will decline for the eighth consecutive year.
Flagler Beach’s proposed tax rate is to be $5.45 per $1,000 in taxable value, what’s referred to as a millage rate of 5.45. The rate is currently at 5.42. If the commission were to avoid a tax increase, it would have had to set the tax rate at 4.8242 (the so-called rolled-back rate) or below. The rolled-back rate generates the same revenue in the coming year as was generated in the previous year.
Under the proposed rate, in Flagler Beach, a $200,000 house with a $50,000 exemption will pay $817 in Flagler Beach taxes. The tax increase will be felt by non-homesteaded property owners who would have experienced the significant increase in property values. Homesteaded property owners’ tax increases in that regard are capped at 3 percent, as businesses and renters are not. In effect, commercial, industrial and rental properties end up subsidizing homesteaded property owners.
The city commission last September approved a $20.5 million budget, including all funds, $6.63 million of which was in the general fund (which pays for police, fire and other essential city services). Next Thursday, the commission is expected to approve a $29.6 million budget, including a $7.6 million general fund budget. The sharp increase is due largely to an increase in the utility revenue fund, which does not depend on property taxes.
Public safety–police and fire services–will account for $4.6 million of the city’s budget, a slight increase from the current $4.5 million. The pier was expected to generate $299,000 this year. That’s been cut by half for the coming year, with the expectation that the pier will likely be closed in the second half of the year as construction of the new concrete pier begins.
City Manager William Whitson summed up the coming budget in a memo to commissioners, listing new or major initiatives as employee pay raises, new lighting downtown, the addition of a police officer downtown through the city’s community redevelopment fund, the beginnings of engineering and design for the new pier and a new sewer plant, and dune protection programs, though the latter are being achieved either with the county’s tourist-tax revenue or the county-coordinated dune-renourishment project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That gargantuan project, dumping a million cubic yards of sand on 2.6 miles of beach south of South 6th Street, is expected to begin in June, though it’s been chronically delayed.
The new budget is also including “seed funding” for the city’s centennial celebration. Flagler Beach was incorporated in 1925.
Laurel says
Politicians never stop, do they? A little two bedroom, one bath house, without homeowners exemption, is over $5,000.00 a year in taxes now, not counting the monthly utility bill covering water, water base, sewer, sewer base, trash, recycling, plant debris and stormwater.
That wonderful growth rate helping us again, right?
How about forgetting the hotel, with overflow parking taking spaces away from businesses, and build a two story parking building for paid parking where property owners park free, or pay for a cheap annual sticker, and out-of-towners pay full price? Stop parking on A1A, and the revenue from the city owned parking garage goes straight into the city budget?
Stop punishing property and business owners and start charging those who do not own property here and let them pay for the use of our city.
Rick Belhumeur says
Can’t blame me… The voters chose to de-commission me. I would have never voted for it and with Commissioner Cooley’s “NO” vote they would have been forced into a much lower increase.
Samuel Poynor says
Really Mr. Bellheumer. Get over your loss and stop saying things you think citizens want to hear because you are getting positioned to run again. The City has so many projects not completed on your watch that they now have to play catch up. Also homeowners taxes aren’t going up that much considering the value of finished projects that needed to be done for years.