FY2021 Budget Passes
Millage Rate Unchanged for Year #13
by Anne Mooney / September 25, 2020
On September 23, Commissioners passed the FY2021 Budget, holding the millage rate steady at 4.0923 for the 13th consecutive year. Ordinances establishing the millage rate and adopting the Budget passed on a 4-1 vote, with Mayor Steve Leary dissenting.
Orange County sets property valuations
Property taxes will rise slightly, since property values were assessed by Orange County in January 2020 prior to the beginning of the pandemic. This reporter’s annual property taxes rose by less than $50, so with the steady millage rate, the increase for most property owners will be minimal.
According to Peter Moore, Winter Park’s Division Director of the Office of Management and Budget, residential real estate taxes comprise about 79 percent of the City’s tax base, leaving the City on solid fiscal footing for now. The City boasts unencumbered General Fund reserves of approximately $17 million.
Postponed SunRail payments used to create contingency fund
The City also has created an approximately $500,000 contingency fund. This money was originally budgeted to pay for SunRail, but the state of Florida has postponed SunRail payments for another two years, allowing the money to be reallocated. “These funds are available now for emergency relief,” wrote Peter Moore, “as we manage the economic repercussions of the pandemic.”
Cautiously optimistic outlook for the future
Moore cautioned that while property tax revenues will be unaffected in the present, as values were established before the pandemic, possible future deterioration in the real estate market could affect Winter Park, and business closings and vacant storefronts will have a definite negative impact. “With almost $2 million in assistance either pledged or spent already by the city to assist its businesses and residents,” wrote Moore, “the city continues to work with all our stakeholders to navigate this difficult time.”
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By: Anne Mooney
Anne Mooney has assumed the editorship of the Winter Park Voice from founding editor Tom Childers.
Mooney got her start in New York as a freelance line editor for book publishers, among them Simon & Schuster and the Clarkson Potter division of Crown Books. From New York, she and her husband and their year-old toddler moved to Washington, D.C., where the two ran a newswire service for Harper’s magazine. “We called it Network News,” said Mooney, “because it was a network of the Harper’s writers, whose work we edited into newspaper style and format and sold to papers in the top U.S. and Canadian markets. We were sort of like a tiny UPI.”
The newswire ceased operation with the death of Mooney’s first husband, but Mooney continued to write and edit, doing freelance work for Williams Sonoma cookbooks and for local publications in D.C.
In 2005, Mooney moved to Winter Park, where she worked as a personal chef and wrote a regular food column for a south Florida magazine. She took an active interest in Winter Park politics and was there when the Winter Park Voice was founded. She wrote occasional pieces for the Voice, including the Childers bio that this piece replaces.
The Winter Park Voice is one of a large number of “hyper-local” publications that have sprung up across the U.S. in response to the decline of the major daily newspapers and the resulting deficit of local news coverage. The Voice’sbeat is Winter Park City Hall, and its purpose is to help the residents of our city better understand the political forces that shape our daily lives.
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The difference between a legit sign campaign and one undertaken for pure show is often in the way the rules are observed. This bogus anti-tax sign “war” was over before it began because it was not genuine.
Now, the vote’s been taken. Not once but twice. And where are the signs? Still littering the landscape.
Real campaigns have real people behind them who care about the process.
Pete Weldon…you wanted folks to obtain these signs. Where are you now?