By Skip Foster, Red Tape Florida
If you live, work or own a business in Tallahassee, City Hall’s proposed FY2027 budget has a little something for you.
And by “something,” we mean a higher bill.
The City Commission will hold its first public hearing Wednesday on a $983.5 million budget that keeps Tallahassee’s property-tax rate unchanged. But thanks to rising property values, keeping the same rate doesn’t mean keeping the same tax collections: the City expects to collect about $4.1 million more in property taxes next year.
And property taxes are only the beginning.
Buried among the budget documents are proposed increases in residential and commercial garbage rates, water and sewer rates and monthly parking charges. Some are relatively modest. Others — particularly for businesses — are anything but.
Let’s start with garbage.
The monthly charge for standard residential curbside service would rise from $26.70 to $28.19, an increase of about 5.6 percent. That’s less than $18 a year, so nobody is going to have to sell the house over it.
Businesses may want to keep reading.
The minimum commercial garbage charge would jump from $33.43 to $40.05, an increase of nearly 20 percent. A two-yard dumpster emptied once a week goes from $59.63 to $89.54 — a 50 percent increase. The same dumpster serviced every other week goes from $29.81 to $53.81, an increase of more than 80 percent.
The increases vary depending on dumpster size and frequency, but they’re substantial across the commercial rate schedule. A three-yard dumpster picked up weekly rises about 40 percent, a four-yard dumpster about 35 percent and an eight-yard dumpster about 27 percent.
There’s also a particularly interesting sentence in the city’s explanation for why it needs more money from garbage customers.
Among the reasons cited for the increase: “The Solid Waste transfer to the General Fund has been increased.”
In other words, the City isn’t simply saying garbage costs more to collect and dump. Its own resolution says one reason Solid Waste needs additional revenue is because the amount being transferred from the utility into the City’s General Fund has increased.
That’s worth remembering the next time somebody tells you a garbage rate is just a garbage rate.
And this isn’t necessarily a one-year affair. The proposed resolution also establishes an annual adjustment tied to inflation, plus another 1 percent, beginning with future rate adjustments.
Water and sewer are going up, too
Tallahassee water and sewer customers already received a 2.4 percent inflation adjustment last October.
Under the City’s rate plan, another inflation adjustment takes effect Oct. 1. Then, beginning April 1, 2027, water rates would receive an additional 2 percent increase and wastewater rates another 3.8 percent.
Commercial customers get another surprise: commercial water gallonage charges are slated for an additional 8 percent increase in April.
And the increases don’t stop with FY2027. The City’s consultant recommends annual increases of inflation plus another 1 percent in FY2028, FY2029 and FY2030.
The City has legitimate expenses to pay. Its utility consultant points to major capital projects, increasing operating expenses, salaries and benefits among the reasons additional revenue is needed.
But once again, the General Fund makes an appearance.
The consultant’s analysis notes that future financial pressure on the water and sewer system could be addressed in part by reducing transfers from the utility to the City’s General Fund.
There’s a pattern here worth watching: utility customers pay their bills, the utility sends some of that money to the General Fund, and the City then cites the utility’s revenue needs when proposing higher rates.
Don’t forget parking
Even parking gets more expensive under the proposal.
A monthly lease at the Kleman Plaza garage would rise from $105 to $120, a 14.3 percent increase. Eastside garage parking goes from $120 to $135, up 12.5 percent.
Hourly garage rates and the $1-an-hour street-meter rate appear to remain unchanged, so this one lands primarily on people who park downtown regularly.
Taken individually, some of these increases aren’t enormous. Another $1.49 a month for residential garbage isn’t going to wreck the family budget, and $15 more for a monthly parking space isn’t going to send downtown workers into bankruptcy.
But taxpayers don’t pay City Hall one line item at a time.
They pay the property-tax bill. They pay the garbage bill. They pay the water bill. They pay the sewer bill. Businesses pay those bills, too, often at considerably higher rates. And then the cost of doing business gets passed along in the prices everybody else pays.
That’s why the entire package deserves attention at Wednesday’s budget hearing.