City Manager's FY 2016 - FY 2018 Proposed Budget Includes Tax Cut
Cape Coral City Manager John Szerlag has released his FY 2016 – FY 2018 Proposed Budget. The budget includes a .75 millage rate reduction in the property tax rate (9.8 percent decrease). This lowers Cape Coral’s tax rate to 6.9570. The .75 reduction completes the 1 mil reduction promised to the citizens when the City began the process of revenue diversification for the General Fund two years ago. City Council provided the first piece – a .25 mil reduction in FY 2014.
This is the first time the property tax rate has been below 7 mils since 2009. The proposed tax rate is well below the “rollback” rate of 7.2985. The “rollback rate” is the tax rate required to bring in the same amount of tax dollars as the previous year. The proposed rate of 6.9570 will generate $74.3 million in property tax revenue, which is $3.6 million less than FY 2015.
The proposed budget keeps the public service tax rate at 7 percent, and sets the fire services assessment cost recovery rate at 64 percent. These two revenue sources will produce estimated revenue of $26.8 million.
On the expenditure side, the budget continues the City’s Five-Year Road Resurfacing Project with $6.5 million for local road paving. The budget has $1.3 million for capital maintenance of parks and general government facilities. The budget allocates $100,000 for street light improvements, $300,000 for median improvements and $500,000 for alley paving. The City also will have $5.4 million to replace aging vehicles and equipment. The City will be cash funding a new Fleet Maintenance Facility to replace the current outdated, dilapidated building at Everest Annex. Cash funds also are designated to build Fire Station #11 in FY 2016 – FY 2017.