TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Tallahassee commissioners approved a nearly $1.3 billion operating and capital budget for the next fiscal year, but only after making a last-minute change to the city\u2019s property-tax rate to meet a new state voting requirement.<\/p>\n
The budget passed on a 3-2 vote. Commissioner Jack Porter and Commissioner Jeremy Matlow voted against it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of good in that budget that it funds, but there\u2019s also a lot of misplaced priorities that I believe are out of step with this community\u2019s needs,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n
The city approved about $983 million for operations and nearly $283 million for capital projects. The spending plan covers services including police, parks, roads and utilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat budget is full of services that we need for our residents here in the city of Tallahassee, and to keep our city being well operated. so i voted for it,\u201d Commissioner Dianne Williams-Cox said.<\/p>\n
Before commissioners could approve the budget, they had to settle the property-tax rate. The city initially proposed keeping its current rate, and three commissioners voted yes while two voted no. Mayor John Dailey said the vote failed because of a new supermajority requirement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe motion fails due to the new supermajority requirement,\u201d Dailey said.<\/p>\n
Under the new state requirement, the rate needed four of the five commissioners because it was above the rolled-back level. Commissioners then voted to lower the rate to 4.2573 mills, approving it 5-0.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, I realized, frankly, that we were at greater risk asking people to pay more and meeting people where they are, given that the costs have risen across the board for working people and families,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n
The lower rate means the city will collect less property-tax revenue than originally planned. City staff said they will adjust the budget using reserves without cutting current service levels.<\/p>\n
The new budget takes effect Oct. 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Tallahassee commissioners approved a nearly $1.3 billion operating and capital budget for the next fiscal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-409708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409708","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=409708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}