Tavares, FL property owners should attend this budget workshop, or open your wallet for higher taxes

Tavares, FL Finance Director Lori Houghton showing a Powerpoint on the proposed 2020 budget to the City Council on July 3, 2019

Tavares, FL residents and taxpayers should not miss tomorrow's (July 24, 2019 - 4pm ) Tavares City Council workshop of the budget and proposed millage rates for the next tax year.  If you don't speak up, your wallets will feel the pain. If you don't ask the candidates running for elections this November why they don't roll back taxes, your wallet will feel the pain.

 

If you live in Tavares, you are already paying much more than if you lived in unincorporated Lake County.  If you use the Lake County Property Appraiser's property tax estimator HERE for a $200,000 purchased home with a homestead exemption, you pay $2704 per year, but a County resident with a property costing the same is only paying $1,930 for a savings of $774 for the year.  Now that calculator doesn't include many other tax factors like fire assessments, etc. but just the BASE MONTHLY savings is $64 less on your mortgage payments.  Retirees should take note.  (PS:  I live in the County, so I am not affected by Tavares taxes, but as a fiscal watchdog, I want to inform you of what is going on - if you want me to speak at a group, let me know.  For instance, several Chambers are run by liberals and they never have watchdogs like me explain items like this. Some don't even let elected officials be introduced. The League of Cities closed their meetings and won't let the public or press attend to provide feedback on city taxes or issues. )

 

This long narrative is for Tavares residents who maybe like the city, but want to REDUCE their city property taxes.  You have to go to City Council meetings, watch the videos below and read the budgets to find issues of overspending, then demand the City Council cut back on spending.  Right now, they are proposing to tax you an estimated 5% more because property values are going up and they are barely reducing the millage rate vs the increase taxes generated by the proposed millage rate.   

 

This is budget season at all local governments in Lake County, FL and you need to stand up for restraint on property tax increases or do nothing and your property taxes will go up again. 

 

Tomorrow, at 4 pm on Wednesday, July 24, when most working people cannot attend, the Tavares City Council will have a workshop to approve the maximum millage rate they can specify for the final budget and property tax millage rate hearings in September.

 

Your local papers and TV stations rarely cover this process, but if you don't provide input NOW, by September the elected officials will approve higher taxes than you might not like.

 

The lessons I explain here apply to other cities, the County, School District and local districts that show up on your tax bill.

 

First, get your last year's property tax statement and Trim notice and examine them for all the line item groups hitting you with taxes.

 

Then, go to your local agencies, like Tavares, and find and print the agenda of budget related workshops or meetings, which could be regular scheduled meetings, or surprise, non-standard meetings like tomorrow's Tavares meeting.  Their meeting is at 4pm on July 24.

 

Then find the Finance Dept. page and where they post the proposed budget and past budgets.  Download them.  

 

Due to recent ADA lawsuits preventing cities from publishing detailed budgets and other documents on their websites, cities are now only providing recent, tiny versions of their budgets.  For instance, last year's Tavares final budget was over 500 pages in pdf format.  I have that because I downloaded it last year, but due to stupid, liberal led ADA compliance lawsuits, now you will only find a four page, black and white version on the city website without any useful explanatory bar or pie charts showing revenues and expenses.  

 

For example, the current "ADA" Compliant budget on the Tavares website HERE is only 4 pages long.  

 

In contrast, here is the 500 page Tavares, FL approved budget they posted last year before liberal ADA lawsuit threats. 

Download FY 2019 Adopted Budget_2

 

But back to why Tavares residents need to go to budget workshops and provide public input on the proposed budgets and millage rates BEFORE the final September budget and millage rate hearings.

 

The Tavares agenda for tomorrow's meeting which is HERE on a confusing webpage (scroll WAY down to find it), says a few important facts, and omits others:

• They already have had two meetings explaining department budgets to the City Council.  Although the City Council refuses to fund and require videos of meetings, I DID video them and they are here:  
• July 3rd, 2019 Tavares, FL Budget Presentation - View the budget presentation on General Fund departments at our YouTube Channel HERE, and scroll forward to 21:44 to see it.  This presentation was on General Fund budget funds, including most city departments like police, fire and roads. This is where you can see they propose very large staff wage increases and benefits even though wages were increase last year by 5%.  Did you get a 5% wage increase last year, or 3.75% increase this year?  Social security dependent retirees only got 2.8% increases this year.  At the meeting, they DID have a much better pdf version of the 60 Powerpoint slides shown at the meeting.  It is not on the website and it is not in the detailed agenda.  I have requested it and will insert it here when I get it. 
• July 17, 2019 Tavares, FL Budget Presentaion - View the budget presentation on our YouTube Channel HERE and scroll forward to 1:38:45 to see it.  This budget presentation focused on the "Proprietary & Special Revenue Fund Service Centers".  Since government budgeting always splits budgets into different sources, separate funds dictate how the money can be spent for operations such as water, wastewater and stormwater Utility Enterprise Funds, the Solid Waste fund and Department, the Seaplane Base Fund and department, the money losing Pavilion Fund and operations, and "Other funds".  For instance, revenues collected for city water services are segmented because they can only be spent on the specified water operations, and not for instance, police salaries.  Thus "fund accounting" is confusing for most people with business backgrounds, because they have much more flexibility in shifting revenues among expense centers.  The Powerpoint presentation given by the Tavares Finance Director, Lori Houghton, was handed out in a PDF, but is not online nor was it included in the online detailed agenda.  I will add it here when I get it. 
• The five year capital spending budget and plan will be discussed at a future August 7, 2019 City Council budget workshop.  
• All the fund and department budgets, and resulting millage proposals will again be discussed by the City Council at their August 21 budget workshop.   Tavares residents really need to provide their opinions in writing or in person by this meeting, but many items will be locked in due to prior discussions.   
• Note:  The Final deadline for candidates for Tavares City Council to be on the November ballot is August 15 at City Hall, thus if you don't like their spending behavior, you need to ensure fiscally and transparency (i.e. implement meeting videos and publish detailed budgets again) supporting conservative candidates file their application before that date. 
• The budget process starts by the City Manager, John Drury, using a "zero base" budgeting method where ALL spending ideas are added to a proposed budget by Council members, staff and the public.  Then items are weeded out mostly by staff to get to a possible total limited by the estimated millage rate and expected revenues.  The City Council then reviews the cut list and may restore some items, running up the need for more funds unless they cut some other spending item to offset the increase.  
• Since detailed proposed budgets are no longer on the website due to the ADA issue, it is MUCH harder for this fiscal watchdog or other members of the public to analyze or resist spending items since the spending areas are not public. 
• The agenda for tomorrow includes a staff proposal for millage rates to DROP slightly from 7.1119 to 6.950, but they never show the last five year's millage rates for comparison, or show the total increased taxes from increased valuations and growth, or show the "roll back" rate which would be much lower since valuations increased for Tavares over 9%.  
• Every year, the Lake County Property appraiser issues official forecasts of changes in property valuations and resulting increases or decreases in millage rates to collect the SAME total dollars as the prior year.  That is the "roll back" millage rate.  But they didn't mention it in this agenda.  So, if the total revenues from increased growth and increased market values went up 8% like some cities in Lake County, the "roll back" millage rate might be a 6% lower millage rate.   None of that is explained in this agenda (they probably discussed it 1-2 months ago at a meeting).  So, reducing the current millage rate from 7.1119 to 6.950 is a 2.276% percent reduction, but using the rollback rate might have reduced your millage rate by 6%.  Thus your taxes may go up 6% but you are told you got a 2.276 reduction in the millage rate, not the tax collected, and the gravy train of government spending starts.  That is why you see higher spending for buildings, vehicles, programs, etc. 
• At the July 17th meeting, the Tavares City Council spent quite awhile deciding where to spend another $5000 in a $185,000 budget for Christmas lighting.  However, at the same time, 

 

My recommendations summarized:

• Review your property tax bills and TRIM notices.  Schedule the your taxes by line item over the last FIVE years to see the trend.  Most city budget presentations never show this to naive City Council members.
• Use the County Appraiser budget estimator linked above to compare your city taxes to the County and other cities. There is a big difference even between cities.
• Evaluate what services your city provides and if you like them, then compare what you are getting compared to your ability to pay ever increasing property taxes.  Generally, working people can afford it for the lifestyle, but wait until a recession and they lose their house due to high taxes.  Retirees on fixed incomes are the ones being hurt by this now.  
• Retirees on fixed incomes really need to pay attention to this because property valuations are going up and cities and even the County are rarely reducing taxes to the full roll back rate.  
• Decide if you want to continue paying higher taxes each year, or will become active to elect more conservative city and council leaders and also attend meetings to demand cost controls.  
• Residents in unincorporated Lake County need to be even more concerned because all the cities have annexation plans and you could find a 4 story apartment building next door to your 1-25 acres rural "dream home" if you don't watch what is going on with Planning and Zoning meetings.  I have posted articles and videos about that issue. 
• Email me at [email protected] and request you be added to my email list.  Like my FiscalRangers Facebook page, Twitter and FiscalRangersFlorida YouTube channels.
• Review your city or county website.  Find out when Board meetings are held and attend them AFTER reviewing the agendas and provide verbal input.  ALSO, send emails to each elected official on issues.   They don't react unless they get public feedback.  It is easier to spend money for Roman Circuses to keep people happy with events than dial them back to control taxes. 
• Keep reading my blog, AND LIKE posts or submit comments so I know you care for this information.  There are no ads and I don't charge to view my posts.  I am retired, with lots of fiscal analysis work experience and that is why I do this, since most local governments are not focused on efficiency.
• Invite me to speak on these issues at your local groups:  HOA's, service groups, neighborhood groups, churches, chambers of commerce.  All the tax districts and cities in Lake County are hiking their taxes.  The Lake County water district last year DOUBLED their millage rate from about 1/4 a mill to half a mill. The North Lake Hospital tax district has always charged the top allowed millage rate of 1 mill, with no reductions.  

 

Vance Jochim

FiscalRangers.com

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Living the good life in unincorporated Lake County where I don't have to pay rising Tavares taxes... I only have to worry about the County which ALSO is NOT proposing a rollback rate for 2020 taxes.