Burgess: Property tax losses

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The Miami-Dade County property appraiser released its preliminaryh tax rollinformation Monday, with all four taxing jurisdictiona – fire rescue, library, the unincorporated area and Miami-Dade overalp – seeing a decline. The countywide decrease comparing preliminary tax numberse from year to year shows a 9percentt decrease, or a total of $22.55 billion.” “These lossew would have been worse if not for new constructiojn that was added to the property tax roll as of Jan. County Manager George Burgess said in a memo sent tocountg commissioners. North Bay Village took the biggesg hit, down 20.2 percent from 2008 levels. Homesteard saw an 18.
2 percent decline, followexd by Normandy Shores, down 17.5 percent, and Aventura whic was down 17.3 percent. Goldehn Beach and the tiny city of Islandia saw no Medley sawa 1.5 percenf drop while Biscayne Park saw a 4 percenf decline. Click for the full list. Staffers reviewed propertyg tax rolls going back to 1985 and found that 1993 saw taxabl value shrinkby 2.9 percent, or $1.9 billion. “Evenh in 2008, when we absorbed the impact of doublingt the homestead exemptionfrom $25,000 to the property tax roll was relativelty flat,” Burgess explained in the memo. “Thesde losses in property tax roll valuesare unprecedented.
” Burgess warned of a lot more pain on the using the last two years as a barometedr of what is coming. For the seconf consecutive year, Miami-Dade faced a $200 millionj budget gap in the last fiscal Core services were kept intact by tightening but assuming the same tax rate adopterdfor 2008-09, the estimated ad valorem revenuesx for fiscal year 2009-10 would shrink by $174.1 million, accordinf to the memo. Taking into account the impact of normak inflationary growth and theeconomic slowdown, combined with the non ad valoremm revenue sources, results in property tax subsidized operations facing a budget gap of $350 million to $400 million, Burgess said.
“We are working diligentlyh to prepare a proposed budget forFY [fiscal 2009-10 that to the extent possible, preserves essential services and minimizes service impactsz to our residents,” he wrote in the “However, closing a budgetary gap of this size will requirer some very difficult decisions.”