Burgess: Property tax losses

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The Miami-Dade County property appraisef released its preliminary tax roll information with all four taxingjurisdictions – fire rescue, the unincorporated area and Miami-Dade overall – seeingg a decline. The countywide decrease comparing preliminary tax numbers from year to year showd a 9percent decrease, or a total of $22.55 billion.” “These losses would have been worsee if not for new construction that was addex to the property tax roll as of Jan. 1,” Countty Manager George Burgess said in a memo sent tocountyy commissioners. North Bay Village took the biggestf hit, down 20.2 percent from 2008 Homestead sawan 18.
2 percen t decline, followed by Normandy Shores, down 17.5 and Aventura which was down 17.3 Golden Beach and the tiny city of Islandiza saw no change. Medley saw a 1.5 percent drop while Biscayne Park saw a 4percentt decline. Click for the full Staffers reviewed property tax rollws going back to 1985 and found that 1993 saw taxabld value shrinkby 2.9 or $1.9 billion. “Even in 2008, when we absorbedx the impact of doubling the homestead exemptionjfrom $25,000 to $50,000, the property tax roll was relativelhy flat,” Burgess explained in the memo.
“These losses in property tax roll values are Burgess warned of a lot more pain on the using the last two years as a barometer of what is For the secondconsecutivde year, Miami-Dade faced a $200 million budgegt gap in the last fiscakl year. Core services were kept intact by tightening but assuming the same tax rate adoptedfor 2008-09, the estimatefd ad valorem revenues for fiscapl year 2009-10 would shrink by $174.1q million, according to the memo.
Taking into accountf the impact of normal inflationary growt and theeconomic slowdown, combined with the non ad valorem revenu sources, results in property tax subsidized operations facing a budget gap of $350 million to $400 million, Burgess said. “We are workingg diligently to prepare a proposed budge forFY [fiscal year] 2009-109 that to the extent possible, preserves essential services and minimizezs service impacts to our residents,” he wrote in the memo. “However, closing a budgetary gap of this size will require some verydifficultf decisions.
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