More commissioners signal interest in raising property taxes

At the board’s first budget work session of the year, city staff pitched a targeted increase to cover transportation or public safety costs

March 16, 2025

By Beth Kassab

With costs for police and fire, transportation and other city services continuing to rise amid stubborn inflation, commissioners discussed last week the idea of increasing how much residents pay in property taxes by a quarter mil.

The talks took place at the Commission’s first budget work session of the year where the elected officials heard an overview of anticipated revenue and costs for next year.

Warren Lindsey, who will be sworn in as a new commissioner in Todd Weaver’s seat later this month, attended alongside Weaver.

Commissioner Craig Russell voiced a willingness to consider a tax increase and pondered ways to get residents on board with the idea.

“It’s just a matter of telling the story,” Russell said. “We still have unfunded projects” and expressed concern about a decline in city services “where we won’t be a destination anymore, we’ll just be run-of-the-mill.”

Russell, who was backed by the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce and is up for re-election next year, said commissioners must talk about the needs with residents and “agree on whether we can market it so that the messaging is cohesive across the board with the public.”

Commissioner Marty Sullivan, who is also up for re-election next year and who proposed a property tax increase recently in a written message to residents, responded, “Craig, you stole my thunder.”

Sullivan said he didn’t mind if an increase is unpopular with voters. He said a .25 mil increase for many residents would be about $8 or so a month or “not much more than a cup of coffee at Barnie’s.”

“I’m OK with people hating me for it,” he said. “If 10 or 20 years from now they say they’re glad we did it.”

Commissioner Kris Cruzada, who was just re-elected last week and is often one of the more fiscally conservative voices on the board, said some older residents are “aging in place” and could be more concerned with increased costs.

He said he encountered a variety of viewpoints on the matter when he canvassed door-to-door ahead of the election.

“Some are more concerned,” he said. “I did get other residents who said, ‘I wouldn’t mind paying a little bit more,’ to make sure key performance indicators can be met,” such as police and fire response times.

“So it is a bit of a mixed bag with some of the residents,” Cruzada said.

City Manager Randy Knight said commissioners will be asked to set a tentative millage rate in July, the city’s typical practice. Then, in September when the budget must be approved, the board can lower the rate if there is negative feedback or if revenue estimates change.

Mayor Sheila DeCiccio recalled how the board attempted to push the rate higher in 2020 in response to the pandemic.

“And there was a public outcry and we brought it down,” she said.

Winter Park’s millage rate is 4.0923 and is the only local city that has not increased its tax rate “since the 2009 Great Recession,” according to last year’s budget document. The rate equals about $4.09 in taxes for every $1,000 of a property’s taxable value.

City Management and Budget Director Peter Moore told the group that potential new costs in the city’s more than $214 million budget could total as much as $5.6 million, but potential new revenues under the status quo could reach just $3.5 million.

The potential new costs include: $900,000 in general fund operating costs; $700,000 for public safety positions; $250,000 for equipment replacement, which he said could face increasing costs as a result of federal tariffs; $300,000 more in the general fund for building projects; $150,000 for IT software and $140,000 to update the parks master plan.

He said the property tax base for Winter Park is expected to remain strong, though growth could slow or at least level out.

He added that he expects harder-to-come-by federal and state grants and higher electric utility costs down the road.

“We’ve seen cities target specific things,” Moore told the group such as raising taxes specifically for transportation or police as some other local governments have done. “Allocating a quarter point to public safety would help.”

At the City Commission meeting earlier in the week the board voted to pause offering more money for local nonprofit grants until later in the year as they wait to get a better picture of the budget numbers and after DeCiccio raised that federal and state grants will likely dry up.

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