Manatee County approves $1B budget for 2023. How much will you pay in property taxes?
For the second straight year, the Manatee County Commission lowered the tax rate as they voted to approve a $1 billion budget.
County leaders voted unanimously Tuesday evening to approve the 2022-23 budget, which prioritizes improvements to infrastructure, traffic congestion and public safety.
Without the board’s decision to reduce the tax rate, the owner of a home valued at $325,000 would have paid about $100 more in taxes than they did last year.
But because local home values have risen dramatically in the past year, the average homeowner’s property tax bill will still be about $17 higher than last year.
Last year, board members voted to lower the tax rate to 6.3286 — the first tax rate reduction since 2008. This year, they reduced the tax rate to 6.2236, with commissioners pointing to high inflation and rising property values as justification for lowering the tax rate.
Homeowners can roughly calculate their property bill with a simple formula: $6.22 will be charged for every $1,000 of taxable property.
For example, the average owner of a home worth $325,000 would pay about $1,772 to the county. Additional taxes are paid to the local school district and municipalities, and tax discounts are available for homesteaded properties.
“I am proud that in each of my first two years we have lowered taxes and allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to building roads to ease traffic congestion,” Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge said.
Manatee County’s budget also includes cost-of-living pay raises for county staff, more than 50 new government positions and new investments to protect county government against cyberattacks.
Reached for comment Friday evening, County Administrator Scott Hopes said he is most proud of the pay raises included in the budget.
“The important thing is our ability to increase wages — 5% for cost-of-living and 3% for merit pay — in employees’ pockets while being able to reduce the tax burden,” Hopes said. “This board is focused on moving forward.”
How will county finances be affected?
Choosing to cut the tax rate is not without its risks, however. In a presentation to the board earlier this month, Sheila McLean, the county’s chief financial officer, described how the lower tax rate could affect the county’s finances.
“We are a coastal community. There are some risks. We are starting into the hurricane season. September is the heaviest month of the year. If anything were to happen, we would still have some good reserves in stabilization to cover this event,” said McLean, who also pointed to the danger of reducing the amount of money available to the government in the midst of an inflationary environment.
But board members pushed back on those concerns, noting the county still maintains millions of dollars in reserve accounts, as well as a separate budget stabilization account that can be used for emergencies.
“If we did have a catastrophe, if we did have a major hurricane that came through, we could adjust almost all of the funds we have to help with that emergency,” Commissioner Vanessa Baugh said. “We don’t want to do that … but you can’t plan for a catastrophe hitting Manatee. It’s hard to plan for that.”
“We should not be hoarding the taxpayers’ money. We should be able to do as much and give as much back to them as possible,” Commissioner James Satcher added.
During a recent budget meeting, Van Ostenbridge cautioned his fellow board members against lowering the tax rate by too much. The county has used its reserves to cover the cost of recent tax cuts, but those same reserves may not be available to cover that cost in the future, he said.
“If you lower (the tax rate) beyond where it needs to be ... I’ll never vote to raise them, so I just caution you to not lower them too much where, ‘Oh, we may need to go back and raise them in the future,’ because you don’t have a friend in me if you go to do that,” said Van Ostenbridge.
While working to reduce the amount of money that the county would have collected from property taxes, McLean explained that the county’s financial staff decided to use money in the reserves to continue funding the same level of county services as before.
“We have chosen to reduce (budget) stabilization, not cut services,” McLean said.
Commissioners also thanked McLean’s finance department for their work on the budget this summer.
“You’ve done a really good job once again,” Commissioner Misty Servia said. “I’m very thankful we’ve cut the (tax rate) and retained as many services as possible.”
Visit www.MyManatee.org/budget for more information on Manatee County’s 2022-23 budget.
