Port St. Joe plans to leave millage unchanged
The City of Port St. Joe plans to keep their millage rate unchanged at 3.5914 mills in the upcoming fiscal year, ultimately bringing in about $497,000 more in ad valorem funding overall.
This increase in taxes, city officials said, would be necessary to balance the city’s budget as a result of the loss of a $480,000 payment from the county.
“That increase is based on property values going up, but you’ve also got to remember, we also are giving up the $480,000 that we got from the county last year that we used to balance our budget,” said City Manager Jim Anderson to the Board of City Commissioners.
“So what you have right there is a balanced budget based on our current rate.”
These additional funds will go towards increasing employee pay, introducing two new positions to the Port St. Joe Police Department, and hiring for existing vacancies in city employment.
The 3.5914 mills rate is 16.59% above the rollback rate of 3.0803 mills, which is the amount of millage required for the city to bring in the same number of ad valorem tax dollars as they did the year prior.
The rate is calculated using the total city property after reassessment by the Gulf County Property Appraiser Mitch Burke’s office.
Port St. Joe’s tax rolls have increased by about 30 percent from last year, or about 61 percent from 2018.
According to Burke, this is largely due to a large amount of new construction in the area.
“The City of Port St. Joe has seen a tremendous amount of growth in taxable value due to new construction of single-family homes from both DR Horton and Truland Homes,” he said.
Port St. Joe’s new construction and additions totaled $66.90 million this year, a 135% increase from 2022.
The city commissioners unanimously voted to move forward with the existing millage rate.
They will be able to lower the millage rate before the final budget is approved in September, but they will not be able to raise it.
The city’s first budget hearing will be held Sept. 8 at 5:01 p.m. EDT and the final budget hearing will be held on Sept. 27 at 5:01 p.m. EDT. Both meetings will be open to the public.
When final approval has been reached, the budget will go into effect on October 1.
Meet the Editor
David Adlerstein, The Apalachicola Times’ digital editor, started with the news outlet in January 2002 as a reporter.
Prior to then, David Adlerstein began as a newspaperman with a small Boston weekly, after graduating magna cum laude from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He later edited the weekly Bellville Times, and as business reporter for the daily Marion Star, both not far from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1995, he moved to South Florida, and worked as a business reporter and editor of Medical Business newspaper. In Jan. 2002, he began with the Apalachicola Times, first as reporter and later as editor, and in Oct. 2020, also began editing the Port St. Joe Star.