Budget assumptions, revenue pressures, and FEMA fund balance
What the county recorded
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The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Jun 19, 2025
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What was said
Machine transcription of 14m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 98% of 43 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
All right. So if there's no questions I'll continue on and start talking about our budget. All right, so before we get into numbers, let's talk about some of the assumptions that are underlying the numbers that we'll be looking at. So going into right now, we're assuming no change in our operating millage from what was adopted for FY25. We're looking at no change in the fire MSTU, no change in the road rehabilitation MSTU, and also for 25, we adopted zero mills for the parks MSTU.
Um And we've been having a lot of discussion this cycle on the PARCS MSTU, and so we hope to continue that discussion here today. And then there's no change in the stormwater assessment. And our water and wastewater. So we have rate hearings scheduled for August, so we'll see um We'll see how that plays out later this summer. And we are on track for our seventh year for our Solid Waste Seven for Seven Plan and you'll remember that is to accumulate funds for the fourth burner
at our waste to energy plant.
All right, so that's the revenue side of the house. What are those expense pressures that we're also seeing at the same time? So we've got public safety staffing and expenses. So this is sheriff growth, we've got jail expansion operations. Um fiscal year 26 will be the first full year of our D shift for fire rescue. We have um Wesley Chapel Library coming online. That's a that's fun news, right? Um We are looking at uh A
wage increase for our team. We did a compensation and classification study last year, and so we certainly don't want to lose ground on the progress that we made on making sure that our team is paid fairly. Um And then there's also retirement rate increases and things like that that we've got baked into the budget. And we did get our next year amount from Medicaid and what our contribution to that will be. So that's also baked into the budget that we'll be showing. And then we're
gonna be talking about just general inflation and then sustaining our county facilities.
All right, now before we get into the nitty-gritty of our budget numbers, let's look at some key economic indicators that kind of help us look and project and plan in the next five years, ten years. And so tons of trash. The budget office looks at tons of trash. Well why? Why might we look at tons of trash, you're asking? Because I'm not actually in the trash industry. Well we look at that because it is tied very closely to the economy. And so consumer Behavior drives our economy, and so if people are purchasing
stuff, they are in fact creating trash. And so high amounts of trash indicates that we've got a pretty strong stable economy. Now, if we start to see that ton of trash slipping a little bit, um what we found fascinating enough is that there's a tight correlation with our taxable assessed value and Closely after that tons of trash starts to level out, we do start to see typically a decrease and a shifting of our taxable assessed values. And it works the same way. If
tons of trash goes up Assessed values end up going up. Tons of trash starts to go down or level off. The same thing happens with our assessed values in pretty close proximity when you're talking from a time perspective. So that is one of those leading indicators that we look at to see how might the economy be shifting.
Another thing we like to look at is how are our new home permits looking? And so here's our trend over time.
And you'll see that they are leveling off. So we do still have some new construction happening, but it's leveling off. It's not at the um the the high peak that we saw previously.
Alright, so new construction values. So this is how our permits shaking out, and then this looks at the value of those things that have come online. So our new construction, and you'll see that there's an ebb and flow to this. Back in the times of right before the recession, you'll see there's a really big, there's a high spike and then a big drop-off. So what we're experiencing now is kind of similar, but not completely, because it's a bit more controlled. We've learned something.
Having gone through that recession as a country, um, as a state, as a county. And so what we're seeing is kind of more uh leveled stabilization where new construction is concerned. So we don't expect to maintain high levels of the boom we've been experiencing, but we also don't expect it to have that sharp drop-off either. But I don't have a crystal ball.
All right, so what does that mean in terms of total taxable value? So the past couple slides we looked at, we were looking at the new construction piece of taxable assessed value. But there's a secondary component when we're talking about taxable assessed value, and that's revaluations of existing properties. And so there's a few things that can impact what those values are going to shake out to be. One of those is did I have land that's now Has a building on it, you could see a big jump in assessed value when that happens. Previous year I was
assessed on just the land. Now I'm being assessed on land plus building. Another thing that can trigger a high revaluation number is: have I sold a piece of property to somebody out of the state and they have no portability of homestead exemptions? And so you would see a big spike. in revaluation numbers there and we did experience a lot of that During and right post-COVID where we had a lot of people coming in from out of state, they did not have any portability, and so we saw big jumps in
our revaluation numbers. And then the third bit of that is just normal growth in assessed value. And you'll remember if we are homesteaded, then you're capped at 3% or the rate of inflation, whichever's higher. So if rate of inflation is higher than 3%, you get capped at 3%. If it's 2.1, you'll be capped at that 2.1%. Right? So it you'll but if you're not homesteaded, then it's a 10% cap. All right. Amy
you just sold us a whole bunch of stuff. Now what does that mean? What does that mean in terms of how how are our cess values shaking out and what does that mean in terms of revenue? Well Our June one numbers from the property appraiser showed us nine point five percent growth. And so What we thought might happen is what happened when you break this out into the two components of new construction versus revaluation. Our revaluation point was in between three and four percent. Last year, our revaluation
number was between seven and eight percent. So we are seeing that cooling off in the market that we thought we were gonna see, which was why we came to the board earlier in the year and said we're gonna be modeling five, seven. and nine percent because we are seeing that cooling off in the market and
Well, got it right this time. So but what does that mean in terms of revenue? So we're expecting to see roughly $37 million more dollars in property tax revenue. And of that thirty-seven million, the sheriff's allocation is fourteen point eight four. million. And then here you can see the slight increase to our payments to CRAs at around 700,000. And then our increase to our different tax increment financing units is roughly 6.1 million. And so that leaves about $15
million coming back to the board in additional property tax revenue over last year. And then when we look at the fire MSTU, they're um That equates to 10.7 million more in revenue. And then our road MSTU, that equates to 1.87 more in revenue.
But that is just one piece of our very big and complex general fund. And so you all will remember earlier in the year we also talked about half-cent sales tax, our guaranteed entitlement. And while those are growing, those were not growing at the same rate that we had been experiencing. So that did apply a little bit of pressure and burden on the general fund as well. Um so big picture fifty thousand foot view. We're expecting if FY twenty five plays out the way we think it'll play out, we're
expecting to start the year with ninety seven million in fund balance. And then we're expecting to see $583 million in revenue, but $629 million coming out in expenses to include recurring plus one-time expenses for the year, which means we are Um presenting a budget where we are eating into our reserves a little bit this year and so we'll have about 50.6 million in reserves, which equates to roughly 35 days of operating. We like to have 60. Um
But we did have some we had some storm impacts with the revenues not performing the way we were hoping, right? This all kind of just came together in a We'll call it a perfect storm so to speak and and so this is kinda where things are shaking out right now.
Um Amy can I ask me a question. Does anyone have uh does anyone else have a question at this point? Um Amy on that ending fund balance and how we went to our reserves. Um, the way we get paid by FEMA I believe is we spend it, then we get it back.
Yes. And so this is
yeah.
Yeah. So let's talk about that a little bit. So this is the first year that the county has gotten some sum. um money back in the same year that the storms have occurred. And really the reason that we were able to to draw some money down from FEMA had to do with the complexity and the magnitude of the impact. And so when I say complexity and magnitude, um I'm gonna give you all some estimates, but just to give you some perspective in in what that magnitude
means in terms of um impact and workload that our team is still experiencing to try to recoup more funding back from FEMA. So we've got this from this storm season we have 147 unique projects that we are requesting reimbursement from FEMA on. When we look at the past 15 years We had thirty five projects.
Yeah, like.
And from this storm season we had a hundred and forty seven. I don't know yet. That's so when we talk about magnitude and impact, that's that's what we mean. That's it it was unlike we had experienced, right? And so we were able to draw some funds down. Um we draw we drew down some funds for debris. removal so we were able to get half of what we were expecting and we were able to put that back into our solid waste fund. So it was about twenty plus million dollars we were able to
draw draw down from FEMA and put back into our solid waste fund. Um we had some what's called force-to-count labor, so think manpower people out there doing work, overtime related, that kinds of things. We got, I think it was about, don't hold me to it, but I think my team told me roughly four-ish million dollars that we were able to draw down in the same year, but we're not expecting to get the remaining. For another two or three years because that does tend to be the typical timeline between
documentation, having everything vetted through FEMA, through the state, it's typically a two to three year time frame before we start getting those funds back um for to give you some idea. The team's working on stuff from Irma and Idalia as well.
So how much is that that we're hoping to get back, and is that why our fund balance is lower than we want it to be? I mean, does that go back into the fund balance?
I mean, also part of it is the fact that our our projections on revenues such as uh half cent sales tax, those revenues took a took a deep decline as well. I mean, so you're looking at probably. Probably half of that number alone is just due to declines in in revenue from other sources. Couple that with maybe another seven to ten on top of that with reserves for for storms. You know, it's it's why you have reserves, quite honestly.
I know.
So I'm just hoping that we can Build that back up with the m you know how much are we expecting from FEMA and how much does that bump us up to? So I guess that's kind of my question.
Yeah, so we're pretty early in the game for me to give you an accurate estimate of what those cost projections are. We are right there's still some projects that need some um engineering inspections on there to help us figure out scope. Um and we're in the middle of some FEMA inspections right now. So we still there's still some work to be done before I can really pull together a number that's accurate.
We look forward to that number. Yep. I think it'll help our
Yeah, as soon as yeah, as soon as I can get you something that feels accurate, I will. I just don't wanna give you um a shot in the dark number. I'm just trying to remember when we've been down that low before.
Because we won't normally want sixty days now.
Yeah, it's it's been um it's been a few years. It's been a while since we've uh been that low. But that is part of why we have reserves. And so then, you know, it becomes a policy decision for us to make on how aggressively do we want to try to get back to that sixty days and what does that look like. Any other
comments? Okay.
Thank you. Mm-hmm.