WINTER GARDEN, Fla. \u2014 Winter Garden city commissioners are set to consider a 5% increase to local business taxes, a change city staff said would be the first adjustment to the tax since 2003.<\/p>\n
The increase would be less than $10 for most businesses, according to the agenda. Staff estimate the change would generate about $14,000 in additional revenue.<\/p>\n
According to the agenda, the ordinance will help the city maintain a fair local business tax structure that keeps up with inflation.<\/p>\n
The amendment would also require the business tax to increase by no less than 5% every even-numbered year.<\/p>\n
Some business owners are questioning how the proposal would benefit small businesses, especially after some have faced challenges or had to relocate.<\/p>\n
Heidi Hardman, a Winter Garden business owner since 2007, moved her business Polka Dotz from Plant Street to Main Street after her landlord did not intend to renew or extend the building\u2019s lease.<\/p>\n
She said the vacancies on Plant Street make it challenging.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really hurting the traffic so we\u2019re encouraging the community to still come out because your small businesses that were here, a lot of them are still here and we definitely need your support, just like we want to help you too,\u201d Hardman said.<\/p>\n
City commissioners are scheduled to discuss the ordinance at 6:30 p.m. in City Hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WINTER GARDEN, Fla. \u2014 Winter Garden city commissioners are set to consider a 5% increase to local business…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[274,558,1015,28,2287,115,1335,139,141,140,278],"class_list":["post-349813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-emma-delamo","tag-florida","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349813","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=349813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}