The City of Miami is preparing a budget scenario that would cut a quarter of the city's spending.
"We're going to budget like we normally budget, but we have to have contingencies," Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins said Tuesday morning at a Bisnow real estate event moderated by WLRN's Tom Hudson.
The city's budget year begins in October. It will be the first since Higgins was elected mayor this spring, becoming the first Democrat in the office in 30 years. She said the city is working on three spending plans — one with no cuts, one with a 10% reduction in spending and a third "that would have an immediate 25% cut in services."
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The city's current operating budget totals $1.8 billion in spending. It expects to collect close to $650 million in property taxes in the year ending Sept. 30. That would be a 10% jump from the previous year. Some of that growth is driven by newly built properties. The rest by raising property values.
Just over half of the city's general fund comes from property taxes.
A 25% cut in the city's operation budget would eliminate close to a half billion dollars.
"You know what that means?," Higgins said, "Your parks are going to be closed. There's going to be no afterschool arts. We're not going to be having little camps for kiddies. Your drainage projects are going to be canceled."
Higgins says the different scenarios are necessary because of the uncertainty around property taxes. Gov. Ron DeSantis has pledged to have a constitutional amendment on the fall ballot to reduce or eliminate most non-school property taxes for homeowners. The governor has not released a plan for how he would like to go about it. The House passed a bill this spring that would gradually cut non-school property taxes on owner-occupied homes over the next decade. The measure did not pass the Senate.
Any plan that gets out of the Legislature would have to be approved by 60% of voters who cast ballots in November.
The House-approved plan prohibits local governments from cutting public safety spending in response to any reduction in property tax revenue. Miami expects to spend $686 million on public safety this fiscal year - by far the largest spending category for the city.
"We have to have contingencies," Higgins said. "If the voters vote for this in November, we have to be ready to go. It's not going to be a joke."
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