Week Off - Let’s Talk Budget

Council are off this week so that folks can attend the Florida League of Cities annual conference in Hollywood, FL.l They’ll hold a workshop Monday morning to cover “Mobility Funds” — stormwater and transportation. I was delayed in getting the overview on that up as I went down a couple of rabbit holes and was feeling under the weather. Next week’s preview will have the overview for the final workshop on the general fund which is Monday August 17th at 5pm.

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Let’s talk budget

At last Thursday’s meeting, Council member Bill Carlson motioned to continue the vote to approve the stormwater assessment fees, both for maintenance and capital. Which I found odd because they unanimously approved setting the public hearing for the assessment in June. I noted in that week’s review the stormwater workshop wasn’t until August 17th but it was doubtful there would be a rate change. A memo went out noting the rates wouldn’t be changing. Since then, the workshops were flipped around due to the change in the budget presentation from July 16th to July 30th. Which council didn’t take into account when they declined to set the mayor’s request for July 23rd (I’m still unsure why the originally planned date was pushed back). All that’s to say no one considered the workshop dates and that council and the public would have had 2 weeks less time with the budget before the workshops.

Also surprising after how last year’s stormwater/transportation budget workshop went. Last year I wrote

As to the workshops, the evening stormwater workshop was the most informative. Council certainly expressed at the end of the evening they thought it was.

Both departments updated council on a monthly basis up to that point, which council agreed was no longer necessary by the end of the year. The reports are posted on the city website, and there is now the stormwater work order dashboard with the companion completed project dashboard.

I genuinely thought the page had been turned, even the whole discussion about stormwater staff being used to help TPD with barricade security. It was like $250,000, there was more than $5 million of general funds committed to stormwater on top of the assessment and TPD have now ordered new types of barricades. And the administrator retired.

I think it’s because the South Howard Flood Relief Project is moving forward and there’s still strong opposition; any opportunity to muddy the waters and make political points leads to council now pushing back the public hearing to set the rate on assessments that no one would actually consider not collecting. There’s a September 15th deadline to get the approved rate to the property tax collector for fall notices.

As to the mobility workshop, the main thing I’m going be looking to learn is how much of the appropriated paving funds are unspent (both carried over from FY25 and approved for FY26). My guess is a significant amount as FY27 only budgets $5 million for resurfacing, which is coming out of parking revenue.

Oh, and if the topic of the Community Investment Tax (CIT) comes up. Those who support using the CIT for a baseball stadium are going to have to wrestle with the reality of setting aside reserves in case Amendment 3 (property tax cut) passes and setting aside funds for the stadium. It means less money in the budget short term for parks and mobility.

Or find something to cut.