By Stephen Kindland
Staff writer
GREEN COVE Springs – County commissioners will decide on Monday, Aug. 2 whether to tentatively raise next year’s property tax rate to 7.72 mills or leave the millage at its current level of 7.44 mills.
A mill is $1 in taxes for every $1,000 of assessed property value. By law, the tentative millage cannot be raised once it is set, but the rate can be lowered after public hearings begin in early September.
Board of County Commissioners members were scheduled to make the decision during a BCC meeting held on Tuesday, July 27, but remained deadlocked on a 2-2 vote because Commissioner Wendell Davis was out of town on business. Commissioners agreed to hold a special meeting at 1:30 p.m. on Monday in the BCC chambers.
Commissioners Ronnie Robinson and Chereese Stewart voted in favor of the higher millage on Tuesday, but Cummings and Commissioner Doug Conkey opted to keep the same rate as the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
That leaves Davis serving as the tiebreaker, assuming the other four commissioners don’t change their minds.
“I’ve been on the firing line before,” Davis said the day after Tuesday’s meeting. “And I’ve been shot before.”
Though he said during a June 8 BCC meeting that the millage “almost certainly” needs to be raised because the county is coming closer and closer to operating in a deficit at the start of each fiscal year, Davis didn’t want to tip his hand.
However, Davis did say that even though he is fiscally conservative, “You need to be reasonable.”
County Manager Fritz Behring has maintained that even if commissioners raise property taxes to 7.72 mills, the county would collect $3 million less than it did this fiscal year because of continued declines in property values and the use of various tax exemptions enacted by the state in recent years.
And that, Behring said, is why his recommended increase of 0.28 mills wouldn’t mean an increase in the amount of taxes paid by the average homeowner.
His recommendation to raise the millage also is based on his concerns that there won’t be enough rollover money left at the end of fiscal year 2010-2011 to start the next fiscal year.
Behring said he can balance this year’s budget without an increase, but to do so he would have to cut another $6 million from a $67.5 million bare-bones operating budget that has seen a workforce reduction of 15 percent during the past four years while functioning at its lowest level in five years.
He said that even with the higher proposed millage of 7.72, he still would need to trim $3 million from next year’s budget because the county would receive an estimated $64.4 million in property taxes, compared to $67.6 million this fiscal year.
“Either way, the budget will be balanced,” Behring said. “The only question is how big a headache do you want to deal with the next year?
“I’m just looking [out] for damage the following year,” he said. “We can do more damage by doing nothing now.”