{"id":320482,"date":"2026-06-26T10:59:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/320482\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T10:59:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:59:13","slug":"safety-harbor-officials-warn-new-law-could-force-budget-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/320482\/","title":{"rendered":"Safety Harbor officials warn new law could force budget cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. \u2014 A new law signed this week<\/a> by Gov. Ron DeSantis is raising concerns among local governments across Florida, including in Safety Harbor, where city leaders say it could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars less in revenue and difficult decisions about future services.<\/p>\n

The legislation, which took effect immediately, limits how local governments calculate the maximum property tax millage rate they can adopt. Specifically, cities and counties can no longer use increases in per capita personal income when determining the maximum millage rate allowed under state law.<\/p>\n

DeSantis said the measure is designed to help homeowners by slowing the growth of local property taxes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf affordability is something we want to address, put the money back into the pocket of the property taxpayer, the homeowner,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cThat\u2019s where you can do a lot of difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Safety Harbor Mayor Joe Ayoub said the change came as a surprise and creates another financial challenge as cities face rising costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy immediate thought was very concerned because we are already facing cutbacks from what could be property tax reform,\u201d Ayoub said.<\/p>\n

City leaders say while revenues could be capped, expenses continue to climb.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur public safety is going up. Our contract with the Pinellas County Sheriff\u2019s Office is going up. Health insurance, liability insurance, the cost to pave roads, maintain parks, replace equipment, repair equipment \u2014 all this stuff is going up,\u201d Ayoub said. \u201cSo if our revenue is not matching our expenses going up, we\u2019re not left with many choices other than to cut back on the services we provide our residents.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Ayoub, the city could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, if we had done this, it would have been $600,000,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it could be $600,000 to $700,000 in the coming fiscal year budget that we are working on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Safety Harbor City Manager Josh Stefancic said staff will now have to recalculate the city\u2019s 2027 budget under the new requirements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe budget will be based on what is called a rollback rate,\u201d Stefancic said. \u201cEssentially, it\u2019s the amount of total money the city brought in this year that we would expect to get next year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the law, local governments can still adopt a property tax rate up to 10% above the rollback rate, but doing so requires approval from two-thirds of the governing board.<\/p>\n

For Safety Harbor officials, that means evaluating spending priorities while trying to maintain the services residents expect.<\/p>\n

City leaders say the coming months will likely involve difficult budget discussions as they work to balance rising costs with new limits on property tax revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAFETY HARBOR, Fla. \u2014 A new law signed this week by Gov. Ron DeSantis is raising concerns among…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3140,274,2161,4029,115,596,99,135,137,136,278,835],"class_list":["post-320482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-government","tag-jeff-van-sant","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-politics","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320482","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=320482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}