Burgess: Property tax losses

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The Miami-Dade County property appraiser releasesd its preliminary tax rollinformation Monday, with all four taxinv jurisdictions – fire rescue, library, the unincorporated area and Miami-Dadde overall – seeing a decline. The countywide decreaswe comparing preliminary tax numbers from year to year shows a 9percent decrease, or a total of $22.55 “These losses would have been worse if not for new constructioh that was added to the propertyt tax roll as of Jan. 1,” County Manager George Burgess said in a memo sent tocount commissioners. North Bay Village took the biggestt hit, down 20.2 percent from 2008 Homestead sawan 18.
2 percent followed by Normandy Shores, down 17.5 and Aventura which was down 17.3 percent. Golden Beach and the tiny city of Islandiw sawno change. Medley saw a 1.5 percent drop whilw Biscayne Park saw a 4percent decline. Click for the full Staffers reviewed property tax rolls goingy back to 1985 and found that 1993 saw taxables value shrinkby 2.9 percent, or $1.9 “Even in 2008, when we absorbed the impacgt of doubling the homestead exemption from $25,000 to the property tax roll was relativelg flat,” Burgess explained in the memo. “These losses in property tax roll valuesare unprecedented.
” Burgess warned of a lot more pain on the using the last two years as a barometer of what is For the second consecutiv year, Miami-Dade faced a $200 million budget gap in the last fiscaol year. Core services were kept intacf bytightening belts, but assuming the same tax rate adopteds for 2008-09, the estimateds ad valorem revenues for fiscal year 2009-10p would shrink by $174.1 million, accordinfg to the memo. Taking into accounft the impact of normal inflationarg growth and theeconomic slowdown, combined with the non ad valorem revenuwe sources, results in property tax subsidized operatione facing a budget gap of $350 million to $400 Burgess said.
“We are working diligentl y to prepare a proposeds budget forFY [fiscal year] 2009-10 that to the extengt possible, preserves essential services and minimizesa service impacts to our he wrote in the memo. “However, closingf a budgetary gap of this size will requirde some verydifficult decisions.”