St. Petersburg, FL – Florida\u2019s Chief Financial Officer says a state analysis indicates St. Petersburg residents may have paid significantly more in property taxes than required over the past several years.<\/p>\n
CFO Blaise Ingoglia announced that a review conducted by the Florida Agency for Fiscal Oversight found the city allegedly overcollected approximately $49 million in property taxes between fiscal years 2019 and 2026. <\/p>\n
According to the report, St. Petersburg\u2019s general fund grew by roughly $133 million during that time, an increase of nearly 50 percent, while the city\u2019s population rose by about 11,500 residents.<\/p>\n
The analysis concluded that spending growth exceeded what would normally be expected from inflation and population increases. <\/p>\n
Ingoglia\u2019s office said the city could have reduced its property tax rate by about 1.34 mills without cutting essential services. <\/p>\n
Under that estimate, homeowners with a property assessed at $400,000 would have saved roughly $535 annually, while a $600,000 home could have seen savings of more than $800 per year.<\/p>\n
The report also found that St. Petersburg added 371 full time city positions over six years. <\/p>\n
Of those, approximately 65 were in public safety roles such as police, fire, or emergency medical services.<\/p>\n
The remaining positions were spread across administrative and support departments, which the CFO\u2019s office cited as a contributing factor to rising costs.<\/p>\n
City officials strongly disputed the findings.<\/p>\n
Mayor Ken Welch said the conclusions do not reflect the full scope of city services, infrastructure investments, or community priorities funded through the budget.<\/p>\n
City leaders maintain that tax revenues were approved through the standard public budgeting process and used to meet growing demands.<\/p>\n
The CFO\u2019s review is part of a broader statewide effort examining local government spending and property tax policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg, FL – Florida\u2019s Chief Financial Officer says a state analysis indicates St. Petersburg residents may have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[2855,2856,187,28,25728,7074,1999,668,3029,202,204,203,199,201,200,67334,8527],"class_list":["post-138037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-blaise-ingoglia","tag-chief-financial-officer","tag-city","tag-florida","tag-florida-cfo","tag-property-taxes","tag-residents","tag-review","tag-st","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-state-analysis","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}