Taxes are going up in Bradenton Beach.
Bradenton Beach city commissioners passed a series of resolutions and ordinances Sept. 17 approving the city’s $2.8 million budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year.
The budget includes a deficit of about $160,000, which likely will be covered by the city dipping into its reserve fund.
Commissioners also approved the city’s 2015-16 community redevelopment agency budget, through which funds pass for projects such as the repair of Historic Bridge Street Pier.
The approved tax rate of 2.3329 mills amounts to an increase for Bradenton Beach property owners. The rollback rate — the tax rate needed to produce the same revenue as the current budget — is 2.1571. Any rate higher than the rollback rate is a tax increase. Millage is $1 per $1,000 of a property’s assessed value.
The tax on a $500,000 home with a millage rate of 2.3329 would be $1,166.45, while the tax on the same home at the rollback rate would be $1,178.55, a difference of $87.90, not including homestead and other exemptions.
Millage rates determine how much revenue a city has to work with in creating a budget. The 2015-16 budget includes a 3 percent pay increase for the city’s 23 employees with two exceptions, the clerk and her assistant, who received recent pay raises. Since 2011, employees have received raises totaling 7.4 percent.
Virtually without comment, commissioners voted 4-1 for each resolution or ordinance related to the budget, with Commissioner Janie Robertson consistently dissenting. Her primary reason was that there are a number of items in the budget that commissioners have not talked about.
“We have budgeted an awful lot of money” for capital improvement program projects “that we have not discussed,” Robertson said in a Sept. 17 phone interview. That’s why I voted against the budget.” She wants the commission to have more open discussion about the CIP projects before it earmarks funds.
Bradenton Beach currently is searching for a city treasurer/finance director to succeed Sheila Dalton, who resigned Aug. 11 before the budget was finalized.